Vol. 79/No. 45      December 14 , 2015

 
(front page)

Colo. shootings highlight attack
on Planned Parenthood

 

Robert Lewis Dear Jr. opened fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and then carried out a five-hour standoff with police Nov. 27, killing three people and wounding nine others. It was the first deadly assault at an abortion clinic or against a provider since 2009.

Authorities say they still don’t know the motive for the assault, though they report Dear told them “No more baby parts” after he surrendered to police.

The killings take place as opponents of abortion rights have stepped up their campaign against Planned Parenthood. They sent undercover operatives into the group who covertly took videos and released excerpts, claiming they show Planned Parenthood “sells baby parts.” This is what Dear is referring to.

Opponents of abortion rights in Congress and in several state governments have used these charges to campaign to cut off government funding for health care services Planned Parenthood provides, such as birth control and cancer screenings. Government funding for abortion is already barred, with few exceptions.

There has also been an increase in vandalism and threats to the clinics. Since July four Planned Parenthood facilities have been targeted for arson, a man was arrested for bringing a bomb into a Kansas clinic, and someone with a hatchet destroyed equipment at a facility in New Hampshire.

“We are learning that eyewitnesses confirm that the man who will be charged with the tragic and senseless shooting … was motivated by opposition to safe and legal abortion,” said Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, in a Nov. 28 statement.

“This is an appalling act of violence targeting access to health care,” she said. “We don’t back down because of protestors, violent extremists, or anyone else. … These doors stay open.”

National Organization for Women President Terry O’Neill said Dear’s assault was “an act of domestic terrorism.”

The political campaign against Planned Parenthood and the right to choose abortion hasn’t stopped. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee joined in calling Dear’s assault “domestic terrorism,” and then went on to denounce abortion. “There’s no excuse for killing other people, whether it’s inside … Planned Parenthood clinics, where many millions of babies die, or whether it’s people attacking Planned Parenthood,” he told CNN Nov. 29.

Speaking to Fox News the same day, fellow Republican candidate Carly Fiorina said that while “nothing justifies” the shootings in Colorado, Dear’s rampage had nothing to do with the campaign against Planned Parenthood that she has been a vocal participant in. She claimed “the vast majority of Americans agree what Planned Parenthood is doing is wrong.”

President Barack Obama issued a statement Nov. 28 that presented the issue as one of “gun violence,” and called for doing “something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them.” He also took the opportunity to praise the police, who face widespread protests for brutality and killings across the country. One of the people killed and five of those wounded in Colorado were cops.

Editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post also presented the main issue involved as “gun violence,” not funding for Planned Parenthood or the right to choose abortion.

Dear is being held without bond. Colorado officials say they plan to charge him with first-degree murder, which could carry the death penalty. Most news accounts have described him as a “loner” and “malcontent,” with no apparent ties to anti-abortion organizations.

Supreme Court takes abortion case

Earlier in November the Supreme Court announced it will consider a challenge to a state law that would force the closure of all but about 10 clinics that provide abortions in Texas. The 2013 legislation requires clinics to meet the standards of “ambulatory surgical centers” and that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital — mandates that defenders of women’s rights point out are expensive, medically unnecessary and designed to drive clinics out of business.

Other anti-abortion restrictions in the Texas law have already forced about half of the 41 clinics that provided abortion there to close. If the court upholds the provisions being challenged, abortion services would only be available in the metropolitan areas of Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio — not in rural areas, the Rio Grande Valley and all of west Texas.

Opponents of the right to choose abortion have pushed through hundreds of state laws in recent years restricting access. Some 24 states now have some version of the type of regulations being challenged in the Texas case.
 
 
Related articles:
Defend Planned Parenthood, abortion rights!
 
 
 
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