Robert Dear, the 57-year-old man whose recent shooting spree outside of a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic killed three and wounded nine, is deranged; that much is clear. Since being apprehended by police, he’s made garbled and angry references to “Planned Parenthood” and “baby parts.” While it’s true that Dear’s despicable actions do not represent the anti-abortion movement as a whole, the content of his semi-coherent rant did not originate in a vacuum.
Activists on the far right have been waging a concerted and increasingly vicious smear campaign against Planned Parenthood for months. Over the summer, a video surfaced purporting to expose gross ethical violations committed by employees of the reproductive health organization, including the harvesting and sale of fetuses for profit. Released by an anti-abortion group calling itself the Center for Medical Progress, it was quickly exposed as a hoax, with heavily edited dialog taken out of context and footage from a miscarriage that was purported to be an abortion. Still, the video caused a firestorm among anti-abortionists, who demanded that the organization be stripped of government funding, which totals approximately $450 million annually.
Republicans in the house moved quickly, taking time from their busy schedules of accomplishing absolutely nothing, to conduct a nakedly partisan witch hunt against the organization, which has for nearly a century helped millions of women to receive proper health care, they otherwise would not have been able to afford.
Still, the video that inspired such swift action had been thoroughly discredited by the time Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, was subpoenaed to testify before congress. Over the course of five grueling hours, Republican men aggressively scrutinized Richards, desperately trying to find fault—of any kind—in Planned Parenthood’s operations. In between constant interruptions, Richards defended the integrity of her organization. As members of congress peppered her with questions—many of them regarding basic aspects of women’s health that could have been easily answered with a quick Google search—it became quite clear that these men had little idea of what Planned Parenthood actually provides for women. (Only three percent of its budget goes toward abortion services for instance.)
The incident was a powerful demonstration of a simple reality in the conversation about reproductive rights.
Regardless of any well intentioned religious convictions about life beginning at conception, practically speaking, this discussion amounts to an argument between women, who want access to basic reproductive health care, and men who want to limit women’s access to that health care and effectively control women’s bodies.
After the hearing concluded, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren put it this way: “We’ve been in that world before. I’m talking about a world where women died. I’m talking about a world where women committed suicide rather than go forward with a pregnancy they could not handle and, what the Republicans are saying is that they want to go back. And what I want to make clear is that we are not going back — not now, not ever.”
As of press time there is a contingent of Republicans in the house who are again threatening to shut down the government unless Planned Parenthood’s federal funding is stripped from the 2016 budget.
The bottom line is, Planned Parenthood caters to underprivileged women, who are disproportionately black and Latino, providing pap smears, breast exams, and STD testing among myriad other services. An attack on Planned Parenthood is essentially an attack on millions of women of color who rely on the organization for affordable health care. El Tecolote stands with Planned Parenthood.