There are no coincidences when it comes to anti choice violence

In 1986 I witnessed the bombing of a women's clinic which performed abortions.

I was working at a company in midtown Manhattan at the time. It was 1:30 in the morning and most of the employees had already left so there were only a handful of people in the office. New York, New York may be the city that never sleeps but it was still pretty quiet and empty at that time of night in that neighborhood.

I was sitting at my desk when I heard a loud explosion that shook the building that I was in and made my ears ring. After an initial moment of shock, I rushed to the windows that overlooked 30th Street and saw smoke pouring out of a building halfway up the block and could see broken glass on the street. I called 911 to report the incident and later saw the first responders arrive. It wasn't until the next day that I learned that there was a women's clinic in that building and that two people had been injured from the blast.

Flash forward six years later. It's one month before New York City would play host to the Democratic National Convention and everyone is gearing up for the event. I'm back working at the aforementioned company after a three-year stint at another. The late Cardinal O'Connor announces that he will conduct a series of prayer vigils in NYC. They are mostly to take place in front of places like homeless shelters and soup kitchens. One stop stands out: it's right outside the clinic that was bombed. Defying all belief, O'Connor claimed that the decision to stage a vigil there had nothing to do with the abortion clinic -- it was just a coincidence -- nothing political at all and no need to read anything into the choice of venue.

Let's look at another "coincidence":

In March 1993, three months into the administration of our first pro-choice president, Bill Clinton, abortion provider Dr. David Gunn was murdered in Pensacola, Florida. That was the beginning of what would become a five-fold increase in violence against abortion providers throughout the Clinton years.

Today's assassination of Dr. George Tiller comes five months into the term of our second pro-choice president. For anyone who would like to believe that this is a statistical anomaly, a coincidence that doesn't portend anything, again, you are wrong.

During the entire Bush administration, from 2000-2008 there were no murders.

During the Clinton era, between 1994-2000 there were six abortion providers and clinic staff murdered, and 17 attempted murders of abortion providers (one of these attempts was on Dr. Tiller who was shot in both arms.) There were 12 bombings or arsons during the Clinton years.

During the Bush administration, not only were there no murders, there were no attempted murders. There was one clinic bombing during the Bush years.

One can only conclude that like terrorist sleeper cells, these extremists have now been set in motion. Indeed the evidence is already there. The chatter, the threats, the hate-filled rhetoric are abundant.

In the last year of the Bush administration there were 396 harassing calls to abortion clinics. In just the first four months of the Obama administration that number has jumped to 1401.

Make no mistake that the assassination of Dr. George Tiller was a political act and an act of terrorism.

To think otherwise, you'd need to believe that people can somehow only control insane murderous impulses during the years where there's an R beside the name of resident of the White House (you know, kind of like the way teabaggers "spontaneously" found a need to talk about a revolution over government spending only after Obama was in office and not while W was actually destroying the economy).

This isn't to say that clinics and doctors did not face violent intimidation during the Bush years, just none that rose to a final solution:

According to the National Abortion Federation, since 2000 abortion providers have reported 14 arsons, 78 death threats, 66 incidents of assault and battery, 117 anthrax threats, 128 bomb threats, 109 incidents of stalking, 541 acts of vandalism, one bombing, and one attempted murder.

And, of course there were the "mainstream" groups who egged them on over the years:

Some pro-life groups are issuing statements of condemnation and attempting to paint this murder as the work of an extremist. But this latest act of terrorism is, sadly, not an anomaly. It is part of a clearly-established pattern of harassment, intimidation and violence against abortion providers and pro-choice individuals. And mainstream pro-life groups shoulder much of the blame.

Pro-life organisations routinely refer to abortion as “murder”, a “genocide” and a “holocaust”. They post the full names abortion providers on their websites, along with their addresses, their license plate numbers, their photos, the names of children and the schools those children attend (sometimes with helpful Wild-West-style “Wanted” posters offering $5,000 rewards).

When you convince your followers that abortion providers are the equivalent of SS officers slaughtering innocents by the millions, tell them that “it’s all-out WAR” against pro-choicers and then provide the home addresses and personal information of the “monster” “late-term baby-killer” abortion providers you’re supposedly at war against, you can’t act surprised when those followers conclude that it’s morally justified to use the information to kill doctors.

Add to that the bomb-throwers in the media who are quick to proclaim their innocence -- that calling Tiller a baby killer over and over and over again (repeat 29 times) has no effect or consequence.

[These are the same type of folks who would paint Obama as a terrorist lover during the election or who are SHOCKED! SCHOCKED! when their rejection of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court based on arguments that she practices identity politics or is less than smart results in underestimating "the degree to which a few conservatives would say a few extreme things, and that would be characterized as what all conservatives think."]

So what's to be done now?

I agree with Ezra Klein:

This was, in other words, a political act. Tiller was murdered so that those in his line of work would be intimidated. In conversations with folks yesterday, I heard well-meaning variants on the idea that it would be unseemly to push legislation in the emotional aftermath of Tiller's execution. I disagree. Roeder was acting in direct competition with the United States Congress. And it's quite likely that he changed the status quo. Legislative language and judicial rulings had made abortive procedures legal and thus accessible. Yesterday's killing was meant to render abortive procedures unsafe for doctors to conduct and thus inaccessible.

If a woman cannot get an abortion because no nearby providers are willing to assume the risk of performing it, the actual outcome is precisely the same as if the procedure were illegal. Roeder has, in all likelihood, made abortion less accessible. It would be, in my view, a perfectly appropriate response for the Congress to decisively prove his action not only ineffectual, but, in a broad sense, counterproductive.

That's not to suggest fast-tracking legislation that radically transforms the county's uneasy consensus. But there are plenty of remedies that speak to the question of access alone: Bills that make abortion centers safer and help poor women afford treatment, for instance. We can't stop Scott Roeder from killing George Tiller. But we can stop him from having his intended effect on a woman's ability to choose.

And, there's this from Feministe:

The Feminist Majority Foundation has a form on their website that you can use to send your condolences to Dr. Tiller’s family — which includes a wife, four children and ten grandchildren — and his staff. I hope that you’ll all take the time to write a personalized letter expressing your sorrow at his death, and deep respect and gratitude for the work he did while alive, even if it’s short. This is the most important item in this post.

Jill yesterday put up a post encouraging you to make a pro-choice donation in Dr. Tiller’s honor and memory. Please check that out and give if you can, if you haven’t already.

NOTES:

RE: The Cardinal O'Connor Pray-in. The block which housed the clinic was nearly filled-in with prayer vigil members -- and the surrounding corners and blocks in nearly all directions were full of thousands of pro choice counter protesters. The abortion clinic protesters -- that is what they were -- also had to contend with hundreds and hundreds of flyers which said "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries" or which pointed out the non reality of O'Connor's claim that the vigil was not abortion-related which floated down on them over the course of their protest from an office which witnessed the bombing of that clinic six years earlier. New York's Finest could be observed picking up flyers, laughing at what they said, looking up briefly at our windows and choosing not to stop their, um, distribution.

Yesterday, Chris Moore's Pittsburgh Now TV show covered the subject of the high rate of abortion among African American women. As there was no mention of the assassination of Dr. Tiller, I hope I'm not going out on a limb to think that the program was a repeat (but maybe another "coincidence"). Day Gardner of the National Black Pro-Life Union, which is anti choice, was a guest on the program. This was not the first time that Moore featured a guest who thought that there was a racist conspiracy to kill black babies with abortion as the main weapon of choice or that words like genocide or eugenics were floated.

It is true that that African American women have a much higher rate of abortions than white women (about 3 to 1). What was never mentioned on the show was a very simple explanation for that high rate: they also have a three times greater rate of unintended pregnancies. And, if you couldn't guess that Ms. Gardner is also against all forms of birth control (including condoms), then you haven't been paying attention.

If you believe that abortion politics have no local consequences, remember that Lil Mayor Luke voted against the "bubble zone" which protects clinic patrons and staff back when he was a member of council.
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