A Year After Planned Parenthood Shooting, a Call for Women's Rights

By The Denver Post | Editorial

27 November 16

 

ne year ago a man beset with mental illness decided to add a deadly rejoinder to the debate over women’s access to abortion services.

The 57-year-old gunman killed three people, including a police officer, at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs on Black Friday, a day typically spent relaxing or shopping with family and friends. A dozen others, including officers and sheriffs deputies, were injured.

As Denver Post reporters noted during the aftermath, “the very nature of the incident — a shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic — managed to tie together two of the nation’s most divisive issues into one combustible package.”

The shooting and standoff lasted five hours as the chilly day grew cold and snowy. Inside the clinic, patients and staff hid under tables and in locked rooms. People inside nearby businesses were told to stay put. More than 100 people waited out the standoff inside a grocery store.

The bloodshed similarly held the national debate over abortion rights hostage. Abortion-rights groups blamed the attack on videos made undercover by the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group. The videos showed Planned Parenthood officials talking about fetal tissue to be used in medical research.

On the other side, there were disgraceful comments by anti-abortion advocates, such as a Facebook post from sate Rep. Joann Windholz, R-Commerce City, who claimed: “The true instigator of this violence and all violence at any pph [Planned Parenthood] facility is [Planned Parenthood] themselves.”

Windholz’s apparent acceptance of violence against such clinics was chilling indeed. Perhaps her uneven comment played a role in her devastating defeat at the polls earlier this month.

Today we call out for sober reflection on this miserable tragedy and a renewed pledge to women’s rights. They took a beating this election season. For many voters, the presidential race — given the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court — became an usually intense proxy battle over abortion rights.

In a presidential debate, Republican Donald Trump talked of “ripping” babies from the womb to illustrate his distaste for the practice of late-term abortions.

Let’s remember that, according to the Guttmacher Institute, fewer than 2 percent of abortions in this country are performed after the second trimester.

Many states have placed restrictions on abortion providers. Most states forbid public funding of abortion services. Seventeen states mandate that women receive counseling before an abortion. Twenty-seven states require waiting periods and 37 states require parental involvement for minors seeking an abortion.

No doubt all of those state laws have complicated arguments on both sides of the question. But also without doubt is that for the vast majority of women who choose an abortion, the decision isn’t made lightly. There are many compelling reasons for seeking the service.

The nation just endured a bare-knuckled election season made more divisive by Trump’s dependence of stirring hatred toward certain populations and Hillary Clinton’s arrogant summation of many Trump supporters as “deplorables.”

Against this backdrop, we prepare to enter a new year in which conservatives more often on the side of restricting abortion rights hold sway in Washington and in most state legislatures.

Going forward, those who support women’s rights and Planned Parenthood face serious headwinds indeed.

But call we will and do for a reasoned approach that holds dear the concept that women ought to be the ones making decisions about their own bodies, and clinics like the one attacked in Colorado Springs ought to be protected and available to them.