Saturday, November 28, 2015

Are More Attacks on Planned Parenthood Invevitable?

Murderer Robert Lewis Dear (L) and anti-abortion extremist, David Daleiden
Ninety-seven percent of the budget for activities at Planned Parenthood have noting to do with abortion services.   Services range from STD testing, treatment and vaccines to contraception services to sex education to cervical cancer screening; pregnancy testing, vasectomies; and LGBT related services.  Half of the Planned Parenthood facilities provide no abortion services whatsoever.  Planned Parenthood centers are known for providing services to minorities and the poor who have no other access to health care services other than hospital emergency rooms.  Of course, far right Christians oppose contraception of any form and have shown by their overwhelming support for Republican policies that providing health care services to the poor is not even on their radar screens.  Meanwhile, the Christofascists and professional Christian set continue to do all they can to spread lies and disinformation about Planned Parenthood - they spread similar lies and falsehoods about LGBT citizens - in the hope of whipping up violence against both Planned Parenthood and LGBT Americans.  With these "godly folk" the truth and honesty are unknown concepts. A piece in The Raw Story makes the case that the shootings in Colorado Springs yesterday were inevitable given the Christofascist non-stop propaganda.  Here are article highlights:

What happened at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood on the Friday after Thanksgiving was inevitable. After the deceptively-named Center for Medical Progress released the equally deceptively-edited videos accusing Planned Parenthood of profiting from the sale of fetal parts, someone had to die in the end.

Of all the phony attacks and accusations made against Planned Parenthood by a new generation of anti-choice activists like James O’ Keefe and Lila Grace Rose, the videos created by former O’Keefe confederate David Daleiden raised the bar — or lowered it depending on how you view them — on over the top accusations intended to fire up Christian conservatives and embolden lawmakers to do all they can to destroy Planned Parenthood.

Where Daleiden really hit one out of the park for the anti-choice crowd was when he accused Planned Parenthood of selling  fetal tissue — used by researchers looking for cures for Alzheimer’s, among other things — and making a profit off of it.  Which turned out to be a lie.

When interviewed, Daleiden carefully parsed his words and flagrantly misinterpreted the words of the people caught on tape, thereby filling his nothing-burger of an exposé — for which he received a nice budget that allowed him to work on the project for two years — with red meat for the anti-choice crowd.

Daleiden was more than modestly successful. Republican lawmakers in conservative states were able to cut some funding for Planned Parenthood, while GOP presidential candidates had yet something else to grandstand about in order to woo the evangelical base.

With so much heat thrown off by Daleiden’s anti-abortion project, it is no surprise — and it absolutely cannot be to him — that someone somewhere would take his lies to the extreme and try and do something about it. With extreme prejudice.

According to NBC, Robert Lewis Dear — who killed three people including a cop, making him a hero to these “pro-life” folks while shooting up a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood — reportedly told investigators “no more baby parts" after he was arrested.
So it appears that Robert Lewis Dear shot up a Planned Parenthood because he was familiar with David Daleiden’s videotape lies. This is not to say that this is something that Daleiden was hoping for. But when Daleiden published his videos with great fanfare, he primed more than a few future domestic terrorists to take the law — God’s or their own — into their own hands.

David Dalieden didn’t pull the trigger — he just showed Robert Lewis Dear where he needed to aim the gun.
Rather that obsess about Islamic terrorists, perhaps the FBI and Home Land Security ought to be paying more attention to Christian extremists and their allies who create an atmosphere where murders occur.

1 comment:

EdA said...

From the New York Times, 'The younger Mr. Dear was raised in the Baptist church, [ex-wife] Ms. Ross said. He was religious but not a regular churchgoer, not one to harp on his faith. “He believed wholeheartedly in the Bible. That’s what he always said, he read it cover to cover to cover,” she said But he wasn’t fixated on it, she added.'

I expect every Baptist, especially every Southern Baptist, and most especially every fundamentalist Christianist seeking to become President (God forbid, and I hope the American public does to) to denounce this terrorist POS immediately.

Also, one would hope (but not expect) that that Illinois Republiscum congressman who attempted to apologize for this mass murderer on CNN WHILE THE THUG WAS STILL SHOOTING AT POLICE AND OTHERS should, at the least, say "Oops." (If he were to have any integrity, of course, more would be expected.0