Abortion activists continue to abuse last month’s tragic Colorado Springs shooting, in which three died and nine more were wounded, to further an agenda of silencing opponents. On November 25, a group of abortion proponents led by NARAL Pro-Choice America petitioned the Department of Justice to react to the tragedy by labeling the peaceful, free speech of Pro-Life advocates as “domestic terrorism.”
The petition was addressed to United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who herself seized on the immediate aftermath of the shooting to voice her bias that the act was “a crime against women receiving healthcare services at Planned Parenthood.” However, as Texas Right to Life has reported, there is no evidence tying the shooter – who appeared deranged and has a history of instability – to the Pro-Life movement. In fact, one of the shooter’s ex-wives has stated that abortion was not something her husband ever obsessed over.
The DOJ petition was ostensibly drafted to decry the instance of violence in Colorado Springs, but language of the letter exposes the deep-seated conspiracy theories being proffered in the abortion industry’s smear campaign organized against the Pro-Life movement to deflect attention from the atrocities which peaceful Pro-Life advocates have recently brought to light. The truth-telling work of the Center for Medical Progress, in their series of undercover video releases, has impacted the abortion industry by raising awareness of the barbaric and inhuman practices that took place within the former secrecy of the abortion industry. Now abortion proponents are painting this free speech of Pro-Lifers as the purposeful galvanization of unhinged radicals like alleged shooter Robert Lewis Dear by the Pro-Life movement.
“These appalling acts of violence are a predictable ripple effect from the deliberate and calculated smear campaign orchestrated by the anti-choice CMP, which has fueled violence by extremists,” claims the petition. However, as the Washington Post thoroughly outlined on November 30, acts of violence by abortion opponents were heavily relegated to the 1990s, with subsequent incidents carried out very sporadically by individuals unaffiliated with the mainstream Pro-Life movement. The author reports:
Between 1993 and 1998, a total of seven people were killed, including three doctors, two receptionists, a clinic escort and an off-duty police officer. It was an astonishing orgy of violence.
And then it stopped. The Army of God’s violent members were imprisoned and scattered, bringing a return of peace that has characterized abortion conflict since the 1960s. The lone exception to this general trend was the 2009 shooting of George Tiller, a late-term abortion provider. Tiller’s shooting by a pro-life radical, however, may prove to be an isolated case, an echo of an extremist movement that has long since collapsed.
Violence is the antithesis of the Pro-Life movement, and in the wake of the Colorado Springs tragedyPro-Life organizations nationwide took to social media to stress their condemnation of Robert Lewis Dear’s violent, anti-Life action.
Texas Right to Life is grieved by violence of any kind, both inside and outside of Planned Parenthood. We pray for #Life to prevail always.
— Texas Right to Life (@TXRightToLife) November 27, 2015
So, while the abortion industry would like to harness the most recent incident of clinic violence to quash the free speech of Pro-Life advocates, their carefully-orchestrated image of martyrdom is simply not supported by facts.
