The spate of “bombings” in the days leading up to the January 22 anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion made for interesting reading. Who cares if the reports were short on fact and long on innuendo?
Explosions did in fact take place near abortuaries in Atlanta and Tulsa. Six people were injured in the Atlantic explosion and while no one was injured in Tulsa, there was some minor property damage.
The blasts, and a third firecracker-type explosion in Washington D.C., put the pro-life movement on the defensive in the U.S. While police investigators have failed to find evidence of a link between the bombings and the mainstream pro-life movement, it has not stopped abortion supporters from their predictable wild accusations about anti-abortion “violence and terrorism.”
Even U.S. President Bill Clinton got into the act in the wake of the Atlanta bombing, denouncing the extremists who would use terror to prevent women from exercising reproductive choice.
One wonders of the president is prepared to retract any of his statements in light of the lack of evidence.
Despite repeated rejections of violence by pro-life leaders, these bombings have become the bane of the pro-life movement. Pro-abortion supporters rub their hands together in glee at the slightest suggestion of anti-abortion violence, and an uncritical media is swift to make the facile association.
The Washington case was especially instructive as a small explosive device found at the base of a street lamp was transformed by initial media reports into an extremist conspiracy against a local Planned Parenthood office. Naturally Planned Parenthood officials reveled in the glow of potential victimhood, and bemoaned “the reality of violence” that the Washington firecracker had wrought.
None of this is to dismiss any acts of real violence committed against abortion providers and their property. Pro-lifers have long rejected such action and readily admit to the damage done to the movement by individual fanatics.
But it is the constant effort to depict all pro-lifers as terrorists-in-training that becomes tiresome.
As on U.S. pro-life leader said in the wake of the Washington “explosion”, -“the pro-life movement is the only movement that is guilty first and has to prove itself innocent.”