MORE ON THE LATEST ROUND
OF ANTI-ABORTION TERRORISM

My friend Jennifer, co-founder of Mildred's Umbrella Theater Company, who also appeared with me in Envy the Cockroach for dos chicas, read the article about the Planned Parenthood shooting more carefully than I did. From Real Art comments:

"The clinic does not perform abortions but refers patients to clinics that do"

Planned Parenthood provides health care, birth control, health and sexual advice, etc. This one doesn't even do abortions. They just needed a place to channel their praying and shooting energy and that was the only option in that little town.

What always amazes me about these events, is that some of these terrorists are women.

This is pretty wild. The anti-abortion extremists who approve of violence usually justify themselves by asserting that they're somehow saving "unborn children." Given that this particular location doesn't even perform abortions, that rationale flys right out the window! I think Jennifer's right: they just wanted something to shoot at, which says a great deal about where some of these people are coming from.

On the other hand, I don't actually know of any anti-abortion terrorists who are women; to the best of my knowledge, they're all men. However, there are plenty of women in the movement who approve of violence on behalf of their cause, encourage it even. I guess that's just evidence of how anti-abortion rhetoric so strongly manipulates emotion and identity: many women are taught to believe that it is their responsibility as women to protect children; abstractly projecting a human child onto a human fetus is just the rhetorical device to bring such a belief into play.

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