Despite right-wing extremists’ efforts to take down Planned Parenthood with their anti-abortion rhetoric, Planned Parenthood has a message for their opposers: they’re not going anywhere.
After a man opened fire on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, killing three people and injuring nine, and mentioned comments like “no more baby parts” to law enforcement, Planned Parenthood released a statement.
In brief, the statement calls for an end to all the incendiary rhetoric that right-wing extremists are exponentially creating. Planned Parenthood directly calls out these extremists, stating, “To those who go to unimaginable extremes to close our doors: We deplore your violence. We reject your threats.”
These extremists are intentionally creating a breeding ground for enabling domestic terrorism against Planned Parenthood by their nasty, anti-abortion rhetoric.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee referred to abortions as being worse than the Holocaust during his address in front of pastors on his “Reagan, Thatcher, Pope John Paul II tour.” Yes, he compared a genocide of over 11 million people to a procedure that helps advance women.
The American Family Association also referred back to the era of Hitler with a comparison of Planned Parenthood to Josef Mengele, the Nazi physician who brutally experimented on twins.
Not surprisingly, all these extremists are coming from the Republican Party. Ben Carson, the current second-place candidate in the GOP presidential race polls, brought race into the anti-abortion rhetoric as well, claiming, “one of the reasons you find most of their clinics in black neighborhoods is so that you can find a way to control that population.”
Carson claimed this because of Margaret Sanger’s, a founder of Planned Parenthood, interest in eugenics. She believed in eugenics, but not in the way that Hitler did. She just believed people should have the right to have the children that they wanted, according to NPR.
Not only were Carson’s claims false in accusing Planned Parenthood’s placement of their clinics to be racist, but they were “flat-out insulting,” Planned Parenthood’s Assistant Director of Constituency Communications, Alencia Johnson said.
Johnson questioned Carson’s claims, asking, “Does he think that black women are somehow less capable of making the deeply personal decision about whether to end a pregnancy than other women?”
After listening to Republican candidates and right-wing extremist media outlets persistent rhetoric in banning and defunding Planned Parenthood, I would say it isn’t a surprise that terrorism is a result.
These acts of terrorism are nothing new to Planned Parenthood, unfortunately. Since 1977, there have been eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings, 186 arsons, 99 attempted bombings/arsons, 1,507 acts of vandalism, 2,560 acts of trespassing, 662 bomb threats, 100 butyric acid attacks, 199 assaults and batteries, 429 death threats, four kidnappings and 663 anthrax/bioterrorism threats, according to the National Abortion Federation.
After reading that long list of terrorism attacks, I am in absolute amazement that Planned Parenthood is still standing strong today. This organization is amazing in its dutiful and valiancy in protecting men and women and providing affordable health care for them.
And Planned Parenthood wants extremists to know that they aren’t going anywhere. They demand that domestic terrorism must stop and have a message for those who go to extremes to shut them down: these doors stay open.
prhurst@indiana.edu
@IDSPeyton
