Why the history of anti-abortion violence cannot be ignored

[theHandpuppet]

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/women-choice-abortion-violence
msnbc
Why the history of anti-abortion violence cannot be ignored
08/09/14 By Ilyse Hogue

Last Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Myron H. Thompson issued the second ruling in a week striking down laws that required abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals. He joined judges from an appeals court panel who ruled that a similar law in Mississippi was unconstitutional because the restrictions, if enacted, would have the net result of driving doctors out of business, shuttering clinics, and effectively rendering the right to access abortion moot for women in the two states. Only Texas has seen this law upheld in a federal court after it was reviewed by a panel of conservative judges.

In his ruling, Judge Thompson took the opportunity to focus the conversation where it squarely belongs – on the need for laws that protect the safety of doctors, clinic staff, and the women they treat, not ones that foster an environment of hate. Thompson outlined a detailed history of clinic violence, saying “this court cannot overlook the backdrop to this case: a history of severe violence against abortion providers in Alabama and the surrounding region.”

The anti-choice movement has tried to whitewash this history over time by portraying clinic protesters as kindly “counselors,” typified by the plaintiff in the recent McCullen v. Coakley case where the Supreme Court struck down Massachusetts’ buffer zone law. Of course many of them are peaceful, but the sum of their actions tell a different story.

Groups of screaming protesters terrorize women outside of clinics while their allies in legislatures pass laws that put abortion and even birth control out of reach. This is a well-coordinated, well-funded effort to take women’s personal decisions out of our hands and squarely into politicians’. And try as they might, they cannot erase the memories of doctors who have fallen serving their patients. That history of violence – doctors stalked and shot, clinics bombed and burned – is the history of the anti-choice movement.... MORE