Colorado clinic assault reflects wide attack on women’s rights
2015Ann Montague 2015-12Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 4 →
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As soon as the news first broke of a gunman’s mur derous assault inside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Col., women all over the country understood the meaning of the attack.
The Nov. 27 shooting was another attack on a woman’s right to abortion. But that is not how it was reported. Even as seven ambulances and the local SWAT team complete with armored vehicles rushed to the scene, the on-the-scene news reports were suggesting that it was a robbery at a bank next door to a “health clinic.” For some unknown reason, they said that the “robber” had run into the clinic.
Once the media started saying it was a Planned Parenthood clinic and he killed three and wounded nine persons, they quickly declared that they had absolutely no idea about the shooter’s motive. But certainly, the local media remembered that Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs was the site of large anti-abortion protests over the summer after abor tion opponents released secret, edited videos sup posedly of Planned Parenthood officials’ discussing the selling of fetal organs for research.
On Aug. 22, the day of nationwide protests to de fund Planned Parenthood, local news reports stated that more than 300 people had protested outside the clinic in Colorado Springs. At the same time, death threats against abortion providers rose sharply around the country. This year alone, arsonists at tacked four Planned Parenthood clinics in Washing ton, California, Illinois, and Louisiana.
Robert Lewis Dear Jr., the man who police say staged the deadly shooting at the Planned Parenthood clinic that offers abortion services, said, “no more baby parts” after his arrest. Planned Parenthood reported that witnesses had said that the gunman was moti vated by his opposition to abortion. An official who has been briefed on the investigation told the Wash ington Post that the attack was “definitely politically motivated.”
Two of those who were murdered by the gunman had accompanied friends to Planned Parenthood. Ke Arre Stewart, 29, was a father of two girls and an Iraq veteran. Jennifer Markovsky, 35, was a mother of two who was with a friend at the clinic. The third victim was campus police officer Garrett Swasey.
In a press release, Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said: “It is offensive and outrageous that some politicians are now claiming this tragedy has nothing to do with the toxic environment they helped create. Even when the gunman was still inside of our health center, politicians who have long opposed safe and legal abortion were on television pushing their campaign to defund Planned Parenthood and invok ing the discredited video smear campaign that re portedly fed this shooter’s rage”
The day before the attack on the clinic, Republi can Presidential candidate Marco Rubio stated that ... Justice!
Department must end.” Protesters pointed out that white terrorism is far more com mon and more deadly than any foreign threat. Finally, supporters were urged to contact Mike Freeman at 612-348-2146 and tell him not to use a grand jury in the Jamar Clark case (grand juries DO NOT in dict cops) but to appoint a special prosecu tor instead.
Beginning late Monday evening, tweets started coming that the police were stag ing and seemed to be preparing to evict the protesters. At 3:45 am on Dec. 3, over 100 Minneapolis Police violently evicted the #4thPrecinctShutDown and bulldozed the camp, putting an end to 18 days of a peace ful 24/7 protest and arresting eight.
Kandace Montgomery, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, said: “This morning Mayor Hodges, Council member Blong Yang and Barb Johnson, and Min neapolis Police showed yet again that they would rather tear down Black communi woman’s right to abortion and contracep tion. The current attacks on Planned Par enthood are assaults on all women because it is an ideological war to erode the rights won by the second wave of feminism. The way to start winning the battles of the war on women is to mobilize our numbers and not be diverted.
To achieve abortion rights and birth con trol for every woman, perhaps we could look back at history. Currently, there is an excellent movie being shown around the country called “Suffragette.” It is the history of the last stage of the struggle of working women in England for the right to vote.
The leader of that movement was Emmeline Pankhurst, who wrote some advice for American women. While the issue was suffrage, it certainly applies to a movement that demands abortion and birth con trol rights for all in 2016. In Pankhurst’s book, “My Own Story,” she writes, “I can assure the American women that our long alliance with the great parties, our devotion to party programmes, our faithful work at elections, never advanced the suffrage cause one step.
“As far as I am concerned, I did not delude myself with false hopes. I was convinced of the futility of trusting in political parties. Look at how and why the agricultural labourers won their franchise. They won it by burning their hay-ricks and demonstrating their strength in the only way English politicians under stand. The threat to march a hundred thousand men to the House of Commons played its part in securing the agricultural labourer his political freedom.”
That is good advice to consider as we move into the election charade next year. We need to build a move ment with the strength and independence of the struggle for women’s suffrage if we want to win safe abortion and available birth control for all. n