UPDATE: The shooter has been captured.
UPDATE 2: Three people were killed in the shooting, officials say, one police officer and two civilians
A reminder that some people take the war on women quite literally. As USA Today reports:
A man wearing hunting gear and armed with an assault-style weapon was barricaded inside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs Friday after a shooting spree that left four officers and at least five civilians injured, police and hospital officials said.
In a dramatic operation, with the gunman still on the loose, officers crept into the building and rescued six or seven civilians cowering in a bathroom.
As I write this, the shooter remains barricaded inside the clinic. So far, according to CNN, nine people have been taken to local hospitals with injuries.
Ongoing coverage here.
Shootings like this are the inevitable result of the propaganda campaign that is being waged against Planned Parenthood. Indeed, as the Huffington Post’s Laura Bassett noted in a recent piece, abortion rights advocates are reporting
an alarming spike in death threats and violent acts against abortion providers, clinics and companies that work with them since the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood were released. Two Planned Parenthood clinics have reported arsons, anti-abortion protesters are showing up in large numbers at doctors’ homes, and commenters on conservative websites and online forums are calling for the bombings of abortion clinics across the country, according to Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation. Saporta is so alarmed by the escalation of threats against providers that she asked the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigations to intervene.
“In my 20 years at NAF, I have never seen such a volume, intensity and escalation of hate speech, threats and criminal activity, and we would like to prevent a serious violent act from occurring,” she told The Huffington Post in an interview. “We have enlisted law enforcement’s help.”
To offer your support to Planned Parenthood, by donating money or time or simply by posting an “I stand with Planned Parenthood” graphic online, go here.
My nick of choice is “pro-coathanger.” If they got everything they wanted, it wouldn’t stop abortion, it would just be so hard to get a safe one that many women would resort to unsafe ones. Y’know, like they did before RvW, and have done throughout history, because abortion ain’t new, y’all.
If you listen to anti-abortionists closely, they frequently speak about how women should have to live with the “consequences” of having sex. Because nothing says “I love babies” like referring to them as “consequences.” I’ve known anti-abortionists who were fine with abortion becoming an unsafe backroom procedure that comes with a high risk of death, because: consequences as well.
“Anti-choice” encapsulates just how fascist and authoritarian they really are. All they want to do is to control women, to remove all options but the one they arbitrarily approve of.
They don’t really think having children is a wonderful thing, they just see it as the rightful punishment for anyone being sexually active, or just having a uterus, really. They probably despise the childless, too, for not having babies.
They like to force women to give birth, even when there is huge risk of complications or serious birth defects, and then they’re probably the same filth who shun people with disabilities and refuse to allow for universal healthcare.
I propose a new Golden Rule, to go alongside “Do unto others as you would have done unto you”. And it should be “Stay in your goddamn lane”. Anyone who doesn’t like abortion should make it their personal mission in life never to have one, and leave it at that.
Army of God is a terrorist group with similar goals:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_God_%28United_States%29
In my area there was an attempt to promote speaking engagements of one of their old members as a “political prisoner”, with a progressive spin(he’d been released from prison. Armed robbery, a dud bomb, threatening FBI agents, you name it).
The local Antifa shut that down hard.
Here’s a nice list of terrorist acts not committed by Muslims:
https://www.splcenter.org/20100126/terror-right
Penises, religion and guns. Dangerous on their own – lethal in combination.
“A police officer shot during Friday’s siege at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs has died, the Colorado Fraternal Order of Police said on Twitter.”
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/27/us/colorado-shooting-probe/
@rayhoammed
Not a prince. http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/30614080/waffle-house-waitress-shot-killed-after-telling-customer-not-to-smoke
Just some white dude who was a former firefighter. Pulled a 9mm on a waitress for telling him he couldn’t smoke in Waffle House, that bastion of fine dining.
Last time I heard a guy said he is pro life he had an affair and forced the girl he was having an affair with to have an abortion. Some of the people had/were forced to have abortions before and threaten and killed others. They are hypocrites. I never seen pro life people have any campaigns no nothing to help mothers and children all they do is spew evil they are not prolife they are anti woman, they just want to control them. Plain and simple.
I was sadly pro life but I didn’t know that young children could get pregnant and didn’t know women could die/have serious risks during pregnancy I was seriously ignorant and I’m sorry.
We defiantly need better sex education and maybe we can encourage people to become sterile if they don’t want children? Adopt? Create Artificial wombs? I don’t know.
Officials now say that three people were killed in the shooting, the police officer mentioned earlier and two civilians.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/27/457610892/police-respond-to-calls-of-active-shooter-situation-in-colorado-springs
I’ve got no words. 🙁 Though many of you are articulating things that are worth saying and I appreciate that.
This shooter is, of course, a “lone wolf” who is not and never was affiliated in any way, shape or form with any of the neo-misogynist movements out there, or with any of the existing anti-abortion campaigns, or with any church which doesn’t believe women should have the right to control their own bodies. He certainly isn’t affiliated with the NRA, either. He came up with this idea out of his own head with no input whatsoever from the wider cultural context.
(And that I can predict this particular little list of disclaimers and disavowals makes me sigh even more than the initial crime itself).
I wind up wondering how these movements manage to attract so many members when it’s clear the moment you step outside their prescribed lines you’re no longer one of them and they never knew you.
This is incredibly disturbing, although I’m more surprised that there was a clinic in the Springs to begin with (what with James Dobson’s and so many others’ influence).
I’m also not sure why Colorado Springs is being referred to as liberal… Was the guy even from there? Or was he so conservative that Dobson, etc, that rule the Springs are liberal next to him?
To the victims, I am so sorry that this happened to you. You are in my thoughts.
“Also, the anti-abortion movement is also the target of vigilante extremists”
Kind of like how feminists are also going around doxing, harassing, threatening, and causing harm to anti-feminists and men. . . mhm
The SPLC list that bvh posted is a good one; I also like this one:
http://csgv.org/issues/guns-democracy-freedo/insurrectionism-timeline/
The Islamophobic types are right about one thing: there is a growing right-wing terror threat, the inspiration for which it is politically incorrect to name.
D. S.: “Prince” is an old euphemism for something else.
My wife went to college in Colorado Springs and still knows people there, I think. Need to ask her about this later.
*screaming internally*
To think that I was once “pro forced birth” as PI put it. It’s s**t like this that makes me feel ashamed to be Christian.
Fuck this fucking shit. Seriously, I’m just gonna swear for a bit. This shit is worse than the shit I was just watching, and that was video exploring the dark web (think 4chan but openly illegal)… but there? A page of Anons tracking and reporting it. Back offline, the only people doing any tracking here are the ones with violent intent, not the people who want to stop them.
And this slimy bullshit rhetoric is invading consciousness enough that my mother, who took The Pill for decades, thinks the morning after pill is abortion. I want to bash my head against a wall when mainstream discourse can fuck science up that bad and face no backlash that isn’t met with “baby hating liberal!!!11111!1!”
And then this shit happens, yet a-fucking-gain, and it’s a lone wolf, a mentally unstable person, liberals want to take their guns because “one crazy person”… and we can’t even fucking think about discussing that elephant in the room. Pun utterly fucking intended.
(For the non-Americans, our right wing party uses an elephant as their mascot)
PS — I’m one of those crazy people who wouldn’t be allowed to own guns, and I’m fucking fine with that.
And fuming that this is gonna get pinned on us mentally ill folks while the “abortionists are killers… murder in defense of others is moral” don’t just go unexamined, but blame us.
@sunnysombrera, re: the Carlin quote…I read that whole thing in his voice from that particular bit, since I have the album. Haven’t listened to him in a while (and there are some things he’s said that I *cannot fucking stand* and make my blood boil), but when this sort of thing happens, listening to him rant about it when I’m unable to is so cathartic. Especially with regard to right-wing terrorism.
I’m so fucking tired of this shit.
I hope the survivors & victims’ families have the resources they need to heal and that the clinic can continue to operate normally.
Hey. Been reading this blog for a while. I can hardly read what MRAs post without vomiting, so props to David for his endurance.
Anyways, I’m from the Springs, and I just need to share my rage.
Fuck this terrorist. Fuck the fundie preachers that put this horrible idea and ideology into the man’s head. Fuck the reactionaries that shake their finger at this while on camera but smile about it when only God is watching.
I’m so tired of this shit, and with Trump leading a new American fascist movement, it’s only going to get worse.
@Fruitloopsie
Didn’t you know that women aren’t allowed to choose sterilization, either?
http://www.mamamia.com.au/news/woman-doesnt-want-children/
Freddymurray
I don’t mean to get onto you but anyway I’m a Christian and I had someone tell me not to apologize on behalf of Christians because then atheists have to apologize on behalf of other bad atheists and so we shouldn’t do that.
I know there are times (and continue to do so) I feel ashamed of being something but I quickly catch myself and think that if I have to be ashamed and feel sorry then other people have to as well. So again yeah we shouldn’t do that. Let’s not take responsibility for other people’s actions there’s enough of that in the world.
Bah. Just…BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH on it all.
Every weekday, I walk by my local Planned Parenthood and almost every weekday, there’s a pickup truck with signs and at least one or two people protesting them. I walk on the opposite side of the street so I can avoid anyone handing out fliers or any awkward questions (i.e., “You’re Jewish?” and “Haven’t you heard of Jesus?!” In addition to the “pray to end abortion” signs, they also have “Give Jesus a chance” and “Go to Church!”)
I love PP. They have saved my butt a few times, in between bouts of being insured, and gotten me my check ups and perscriptions for the Pill for reasonably cheap. I hate seeing them hurt, harmed, and protested. I donate as I can to PP, mostly because if they can help one or two people who is like I was: uninsured and not willing to have a break in their birth control, then it is well worth it.
Would these people get it through their heads that there have always been abortions and always will be abortions? In a perfect world with no unintended pregnancies, there will ALWAYS be piss-poor luck, accidents, and fetuses that don’t develop viably.
(I say “viably” because I want to avoid “correctly.” A birth defect doesn’t mean someone can’t have a damned good life. But when a fetus doesn’t develop a functioning brain stem or lungs, that’s a different story.)
Kupo
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/3772513/i-m-done-o.gif
Here is brain bleach and all these people including that woman are in my prayers.
http://youtu.be/FM1oVPgxr54