Gunshots rang throughout the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas on May 31st, 2009. Abortion provider Dr. George Tiller had been murdered in his own church by anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder. The murder of Dr. Tiller made national headlines, but it took the public assassination of a respected abortion provider for the media to examine the violent rhetoric and behavior of the so-called “pro-life” movement.
Earlier this month, in Kalispell, Montana, the receptionist for All Families Healthcare arrived at work on a Tuesday morning to find the clinic’s interior transformed into a sea of paper, broken glass, and overturned furniture. A suspect named Zachary Jordan Klundt has since been arrested for the vandalism. Klundt is the son of Twyla Klundt, a board member of the crisis pregnancy center Hope Pregnancy Ministries, and an anti-abortion activist who has a history of inflammatory rhetoric directed at All Families Healthcare. Unlike Tiller’s murder, this event has not made national headlines. Coverage that is out there has come primarily from Montana-based news outlets, the pro-choice movement’s online networks, and the progressive blogosphere.
We should be able to expect news coverage when someone is murdered, threatened, or harassed for doing their job. But the majority of threatening rhetoric, intimidation tactics, violence, and attempted violence against the pro-choice community is often overlooked by the mainstream media. In the United States, eight murders have occurred since 1993. Seventeen attempted murders have occurred since 1991. This is according to the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, who also point out:
Opponents of choice have directed more than 6,100 reported acts of violence against abortion providers since 1977, including bombings, arsons, death threats, kidnappings, and assaults, as well as more than 156,000 reported acts of disruptions, including bomb threats and harassing calls.
Highlighting the anti-abortion movement’s true nature is tantamount to enacting and preserving pro-choice policies. This term, the Supreme Court of the United States will decide of the case of McCullen v. Coakley. This case was brought forward by Eleanor McCullen, a cheerful-looking elderly woman who is suing the State of Massachusetts, claiming that the buffer zone around the Boston clinic that she protests every Tuesday and Wednesday — which exists to keep anti-abortion protesters at a safe distance from clinic workers and patients — is a violation of her free speech rights.
The issue, as McCullam and other anti-abortion activists are trying to spin it, is that buffer zones are nothing more or less than an issue of free speech, and that by enabling buffer zones, a state government is doing nothing less than infringing on the free speech rights of the anti-choice protesters. The problem with this argument is that it is based on the notion that the anti-abortion movement is an overwhelmingly peaceful movement. But the movement’s documented violence (see above) shows that this couldn’t be further from the truth.
It is important that the mainstream media begins highlighting not just the major points of conflict between the pro-choice and anti-choice movements, but of the conflict itself. Members of the Supreme Court, members of Congress, and the nation as a whole need to be shown the true nature of the anti-choice community — Eleanor McCullam may be a sweet-natured grandmother, but when your movement has a history of 6,100 acts of violence, that’s anything but peaceful.
A Few Choice Words 