Jackson Women's Health Organization, the last abortion clinic in Mississippi.
David S. Cohen and Krysten Connon write
Legislative and rhetorical attacks on abortion clinics go hand in hand with violent attacks. An excerpt:
Sometime late Sunday night or early Monday morning, the last remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was severely vandalized. According to a post on the clinic’s website, the clinic’s security cameras were destroyed overnight and its generator was dismantled and seriously damaged. The post continued: “A review of our DVR showed that in the early hours of the morning, a masked intruder came onto the property and proceeded to methodically destroy our cameras. Other damage found indicates that they were trying to destroy the power lines coming into the building, no doubt hoping to stop all patient care for the near future.”
This type of abortion clinic vandalism is a common strategy employed by anti-abortion forces. Since 1977, when the National Abortion Federation began tracking violence and disruption against abortion providers, through 2013, there have been 1,495 acts of vandalism against abortion clinics. In the most recent four years of available statistics, for 2010 through 2013, there were 66 reported acts of vandalism against abortion clinics.
Although the Mississippi clinic proudly declared on its website that it is still operating despite the attack, anti-abortion vandalism can be so severe that it shuts down a clinic. For instance, in early 2014, a clinic in Kalispell, Montana, was so severely damaged that it was forced to shut down and has yet to reopen.
This type of anti-abortion terrorism goes hand in hand with the legislative efforts the state of Mississippi has undertaken to fulfill Gov. Bryant’s wishes of ending abortion in the state. In 1981, Mississippi had 14 abortion clinics; today, there is only one left. [...]
Eyesbright has a discussion on this attack
here.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2005—Blood Sport:
If you have been paying attention to cable coverage of the Schiavo case, you will see two major themes repeated over and over. First, the repeated bookings of and citings of "witnesses" and "experts" that have previously been debunked, claiming that among other things Ms. Schiavo is "alert and oriented". A neurologist who touts himself as a nominee for "The Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine", an utterly false claim regarding an award that does not exist, has been given apparent run of the airwaves in order to repeatedly assert that Ms. Schiavo is "not that bad", and would be able to "communicate verbally" and "use her arms and legs" under his treatment plan -- a miraculous treatment plan for which, according to Judge Greer, he has been able to offer "no names, no case studies, no videos and no test results". We have even, as many have pointed out, been treated to "psychic" John Edward asserting he was in contact with Terri Schiavo.
Against this background of exploitation and misinformation, the usual bevy of archconservative media pundits has in the last several days begun to increasingly endorse a premise that is, to any rational mind, remarkable: the notion that because the courts have ruled in this particular fashion, it is now time for individuals and government figures to disregard the courts, and take matters into their own hands.
We now have a situation in which two dangerous elements are coming together in a manner that is ratings gold for exploitative "news" outlets. Yellow journalism, finally returned in all glory.
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