Dr. Warren Hern, a Colorado abortion provider, bravely took out a full-page ad in the Denver Post recently citing how the openly hostile, anti-abortion congressional Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives and explaining how their “witch hunt” on providers is not only detrimental to patients seeking high quality medical care but also painting targets on their backs. Hern, rightfully, referred to the groups this panel aligns itself with (including noted garbage farm Operation Rescue) as terrorists. Which, shockingly, they didn’t love.
As RawStory reports, Operation Rescue activist Cheryl Sullenger wrote in a whine-tastic blog post that “Hern’s warped perception of the work of a peaceful pro-life movement that sacrifices to aid pregnant women and provide loving alternatives to abortion – acts that he considers ‘terrorism’ — reveals how much Hern is deceived by his own fears and prejudices.”
However, Sullenger seems to be forgetting the very real consequences of their “peaceful” movement — and her own three year stint in prison for conspiring to bomb a San Diego abortion clinic.
She’s also probably forgetting the numerous deaths of providers due to anti-abortion hysteria like Dr. George Tiller, a provider from Wichita, Kansas who was killed in his own church in 2009 by an anti-abortion extremist or Dr. Barnett Slepian who was killed in his own kitchen in 1998 or last year’s horrific mass shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood.
For some reason the lives of these doctors, who dedicate their time and relinquish their sense of safety in order to help women, never seem to be valued by so-called “pro-life” individuals — in fact, their killers are often considered martyrs for their movement.
But, for Cheryl and her kind, it’s really time to start calling things what they are. If you plan acts of violence like a terrorist, scream at vulnerable women outside clinics like a terrorist and behave, generally, like a terrorist, then woops: You’re a fucking terrorist.
And the sooner we all — activists, the media and every-day sane Americans — commit to calling these sorts of attacks what they are, the safer our providers will be.
