USA TODAY International Edition
Ongoing battle over abortion
Long history of violence in USA since Roe v. Wade,
Although the motives of the shooter in the deadly attack Friday on a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic remained unknown, the nation’s roiling abortion debate has long been a flashpoint for violence.
For decades, clinics and doctors that provide reproductive services including abortions have been targeted by everything from protests by organized groups to attacks by lone individuals.
In 1998, survivalist Eric Rudolph bombed clinics in Alabama and in Atlanta. In 2009, Scott Roeder killed George Tiller, a late- term- abortion doctor who had previously been shot in both arms and had his clinic bombed. In 2013, Benjamin David Curell entered a Bloomington, Ind., clinic armed with a hatchet and vandalized the offices with red paint.
But 2015 has been an especially tense year. Shortly after opponents of abortion rights posted heavily edited videos in July that allegedly showed Planned Parenthood officials discussing com- pensation for the sale of fetal tissue for research purposes, four of the organization’s clinics — in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Pullman, Wash., New Orleans and Aurora, Ill. — sustained arson attacks.
Congress reacted to the video firestorm with an investigation into Planned Parenthood funding, a topic that was quickly taken up by presidential candidates on both sides of the political aisle. As the rhetoric escalated, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned in mid- September that “it is likely criminal or suspicious incidents will continue to be directed against reproductive health care providers, their staff and facilities,” CBS News reported.
In Friday’s deadly rampage, a lone suspect identified as Robert Lewis Dear, 57, entered the Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains clinic in Colorado Springs at midday, armed with an assault- style rifle. The ensuing standoff with law enforcement ended later that night as Dear surrendered, leaving behind three dead — including one police officer — and nine wounded.
The videos released this summer by a group called the Center for Medical Progress include scenes of a woman identified as Mary Gatter, a Planned Parenthood medical director in California, discussing fees with people posing as buyers of fetal specimens. Planned Parenthood officials responded by saying that fees for procuring such tissue for research purposes were legal.
At least one reproductive rights organization said it believes the group’s video releases are responsible for the recent spate of violence against clinics.
On Friday, National Abortion Federation CEO Vicki Saporta wrote in a blog post that ever “since a series of highly edited, misleading anti- abortion videos was released in July, we have seen an unprecedented increase in hate speech and threats against abortion providers.”
The most recent posting on the Center for Medical Progress site is from Friday and does not address the event in Colorado Springs. Rather, it features a video that purports to show a Texas Planned Parenthood doctor discussing harvesting fetal heads for brain tissue.
The root of the national struggle over abortion is the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which granted women the right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy. That ruling effectively divided the nation into passionate abortion rights advocates and opponents whose diverse regional strongholds continue to have a huge sway over national politics.