Frank Bruni had the best piece...

...in the Sunday New York Times yesterday, "Rethinking His Religion," about an old college classmate who had arrived at the University of North Carolina as a devout Catholic but whose life had taken an interesting turn: 

He’d gone into medicine, just as he’d always planned. He’d married and had kids. But he’d also strayed from his onetime script. As a doctor, he has spent a part of his time providing abortions. 
 ___ 

Over years to come, in various settings, he continued this work, often braving protesters, sometimes wearing a bulletproof vest. 

He knew George Tiller, the Kansas abortion provider shot dead in 2009 by an abortion foe. 

Tiller, you may recall, was famous for performing "late-term," or "partial-birth" abortions, depending on your point of view. 

While Tiller was called "Tiller the Baby Killer" by Bill O'Reilly, he was actually a church-going family man who was much beloved by the women who worked in his practice. 

As someone who was raised as a Catholic, I've always had a hard time understanding late-term abortions. But, unlike O'Reilly, I used to wonder what it would be like to sit down with Tiller and actually listen to his side of the story. Might be edifying. 

(I've often daydreamed about having my own talk show -- like Charlie Rose's -- but, unlike Rose, I'd actually let my guests talk and try to listen to them.) 

So why couldn't O'Reilly do that? 

Bruni's piece ends with: 

He shared a story about one of the loudest abortion foes he ever encountered, a woman who stood year in and year out on a ladder, so that her head would be above other protesters’ as she shouted “murderer” at him and other doctors and “whore” at every woman who walked into the clinic. 

One day she was missing. “I thought, ‘I hope she’s O.K.,’ ” he recalled. He walked into an examining room to find her there. She needed an abortion and had come to him because, she explained, he was a familiar face. After the procedure, she assured him she wasn’t like all those other women: loose, unprincipled. 

She told him: “I don’t have the money for a baby right now. And my relationship isn’t where it should be.” 

“Nothing like life,” he responded, “to teach you a little more.” 

A week later, she was back on her ladder.