As Republican politicians furiously deny that their own words helped sow the seeds of Friday's mass shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, Planned Parenthood is having none of it.
In a press release, Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said: "It is offensive and outrageous that some politicians are now claiming this tragedy has nothing to do with the toxic environment they helped create. Even when the gunman was still inside of our health center, politicians who have long opposed safe and legal abortion were on television pushing their campaign to defund Planned Parenthood and invoking the discredited video smear campaign that reportedly fed this shooter's rage."
Lageuns called out candidates Carly Fiorina, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz specifically, although the organization's message seemed to apply to the wider GOP rallying cry of attempting to close Planned Parenthood as an organization.
The shooter, Robert Dear, made specific mention of "baby parts" to police investigators, parroting the words used by Republican politicians still promoting a debunked video attacking Planned Parenthood. While charges made in the video have been refuted by each of the resulting Republican-led state "investigations" of its claims, Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail, and Fox News as an organization, have continued to cite the tapes, created by a far-right anti-abortion group, in increasingly shrill campaign trail and fundraising rhetoric about Planned Parenthood.
With the invocation of "baby parts", there is no question that the shooter was referring to a specific Republican-promoted conspiracy theory directed at the healthcare providers. As the Planned Parenthood statement points out, Republicans were continuing to push those same conspiracy theories on national television as justification for anger against Planned Parenthood even as the gunman was still inside their Colorado Springs clinic.
