Columnist Elizabeth Chidlow discusses Friday's shooting at a Colorado Springs branch of Planned Parenthood.
On Friday in Colorado Springs, Robert Lewis Dear arrived at a Planned Parenthood facility with an assault-style rifle. He opened fire for nearly six hours, killing one police officer and two civilians and wounding nine others before surrendering.
Officials from both the law enforcement and Planned Parenthood have claimed to be unsure of the shooter’s motives.
“We don’t yet know the full circumstances and motives behind this criminal action, and we don’t yet know if Planned Parenthood was in fact the target of his attack,” Vicki Cowart, president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said in a New York Times statement. “We share the concerns of many Americans that extremists are creating a poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism in this country. We will never back away from providing care in a safe, supportive environment that millions of people rely on and trust.”
Dear is being held by the El Paso Criminal Justice Center, where further investigations revealed a potential, and seemingly obvious, motive. However, due to alleged ramblings in interviews, his motive has not been officially pinpointed.
“No more baby parts,” Dear allegedly said to investigators, according to NBC News.
Although Dear was the one arrested, that did not stop Rep. Adam Kinzinger from pointing his finger at Planned Parenthood. In an interview with CNN, Kinzinger criticized Planned Parenthood for "escalating" the shooting, even though Cowart had denounced "extremists" and the "poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism." He demanded Planned Parenthood apologize for its Colorado president’s choice of words and for “inspiring” Dear to attack the center.
Republican presidential candidates also condemned the attacks on the facility, but had varying viewpoints on Dear’s motive.
“It’s obviously a tragedy. Nothing justifies this,” Carly Fiorina, GOP presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO, said. “Any protesters should always be peaceful. Whether it’s Black Lives Matter or pro-life protesters.”
However, when it came to the attack being categorized as domestic terrorism by Cowart and liberal activists, Fiorina leaned far away from their “typical left-wing tactics.”
“This is so typical of the left to immediately begin demonizing a messenger because they don’t agree with the message," she said. "The vast majority of Americans agree what Planned Parenthood is doing is wrong.”
Although Fiorina disagreed with the word choice, GOP candidates such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump used the words “extremist” and “domestic terrorism” to describe Dear and his actions.
“Regardless of why he did it, what he did is domestic terrorism," Huckabee said on CNN. "What he did is absolutely abominable, especially to those of us in the pro-life movement, because there's nothing about any of us that would condone or in any way look the other way at something like this."
According to the FBI, domestic terrorism includes activities with the following three characteristics:
1. Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
2. Appear intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping; and
3. Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.
The Department of Justice created a new position, the domestic terrorism counsel, shortly after the Charleston church shooting in June. Anti-abortion violence has been considered domestic terrorism for quite some time.
The extremist himself, Robert Dear, may not have a “clear” motive due to his ramblings, but his actions mirror others that have been categorized as domestic terrorism in the U.S.
"This is not normal. We can’t let it become normal. If we truly care about this — if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience — then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them,” President Barack Obama said. “Enough is enough."
Elizabeth Chidlow is a sophomore studying journalism. Do you think the Planned Parenthood shooting was an act of domestic terrorism? Email her at ec629914@ohio.edu.
