Original post's link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/colorado-planned-parenthood-shooting_5658f9b1e4b072e9d1c1f5b6
A documentary about the woman in the following picture can be found at: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-most-hated-family-in-america/Colorado Planned Parenthood Shooting Is Part Of A Frightening Trend
Is this the next stage of anti-abortion violence in America?
Posted: 11/29/2015 09:16 AM EST | Edited: 11/29/2015 11:04 AM EST
Kansas City Star via Getty Images A
demonstrator waits for abortion doctor George Tiller's casket to be
taken to a hearse after his funeral services at College Hill United
Methodist Church on Saturday, June 6, 2009, in Wichita, Kansas.
A gunman opened fire in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado
Springs, Colorado, on Friday, the latest in a string of attacks at the
health care provider's clinics this year.
Robert Lewis Dear, 57, who surrendered to authorities after an hourslong standoff, appears to
have been motivated by opposition to abortion. Abortion clinics have
long been the targets of violence, including bombings, anthrax scares
and mass blockades. This year alone, arsonists attacked four Planned
Parenthood clinics in Washington, California, Illinois and Louisiana.
In October, NARAL Pro-Choice America launched a petition
urging the FBI to investigate the arson attacks, stating that “they’re
perpetrated by an extreme minority that’s committed to ruling through
fear and intimidation” and urging the FBI to treat them with the gravity
warranted by domestic terrorism.
“We can’t wait until one more patient, doctor or nurse is hurt or
killed before we say enough is enough. It’s time for an investigation to
get to the bottom of this,” the group said.
Colorado Springs Gazette via Getty Images An
unidentified victim is transported into an ambulance after a gunman
opened fire at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs,
Colorado, on Friday. The attack was one of several against Planned
Parenthood clinics this year.
Attacks on clinics are not always violent, though they are often
threatening, designed to sow fear and to make it harder for abortion
providers and clinic workers to do their jobs. In Living in the Crosshairs: The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism, David
S. Cohen and Krysten Connen detail the many ways in which clinics have
been attacked or threatened in the last several decades:
Extremists have also thrown butyric acid into clinics, glued clinic locks shut, locked themselves into clinic property using items such as bicycle locks or chains, drilled holes into clinic roofs so that the clinic floods, invaded clinics, vandalized clinics, made threatening phone calls, tried to persuade patients to go to fake clinics, put spikes in driveways, talked outside clinics about bomb-making chemicals, laid down on sidewalks, jumped on cars, camped out in front of clinics for multiple-day stretches, and sent decoy patients into clinics to disrupt business.
Cohen told The Huffington Post that Friday’s shooting was on the
extreme end of the obstacles that abortion providers and clinic workers
face on a daily basis. “The normal part of being an abortion provider is
living an working in fear, and today is an example of why,” he said.
“Thankfully these things don’t happen every day but they do happen, and
because they happen, abortion providers have to live their lives and go
to work knowing that they’re in danger.”
One of the most high-profile examples of violence against an
abortion provider is the 2009 murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita,
Kansas. Tiller’s clinic had been the target of numerous acts of sabotage
and violence, including a shooting in which Tiller was hit in both
arms.
Cohen also noted that if some of the people who were wounded in the
Colorado Springs shooting were patients, then the attack represents a
shift in anti-abortion violence. On Saturday night, police were
unwilling to ascribe a clear anti-abortion motive to Dear's actions, but
multiple officials familiar with the investigation described the attack as politically motivated.
“The
patients have suffered from blockades and from being harassed by
protestors, but this is new,” he said. “If it is true that it’s patients
that are being injured, this is new.” He compared the day’s events to
the 1998 bombing of an Alabama abortion clinic; that attack also
occurred while the clinic was seeing patients, and was timed for when
the clinic opened in the morning.
Though Cohen would not reveal if he had interviewed abortion
providers or clinic workers from the Colorado Springs clinic for his
book, he described the climate in which they practice reproductive
health care.
“It’s a very conservative part of Colorado, and Colorado has some very extreme anti-abortion folks,” he said.
This most recent attack happened against a backdrop of increased
hostility against Planned Parenthood, the result of a series of
undercover videos that purport to show Planned Parenthood employees
discussing the sale of fetal tissue. The videos have triggered renewed
calls for the organization to be defunded, as well as a five-hour
grilling of Planned Parenthood President and CEO Cecile Richards by a
congressional select committee.
Friday's shooting left one police officer and two civilians dead.
“To think that this is medical care in 2015 in the U.S. is
horrifying,” Cohen said. “This is how terrorism works. These incidents
don’t happen often, but when they do, they make people fear for their
lives.”