Domestic Terrorists

I came home from the March on Washington to discover, via the Daily Kos, that Karen Hughes apparently thinks that I and the other million men, women, and children who marched yesterday had a certain something in common with global terrorists. When asked if abortion rights would be an important issue in the campaign, she said:

I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life.

And President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's try to reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions.

And I think those are the kind of policies that the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy, and really the fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life. [...]

Unfortunately our enemies in the terror network, as we're seeing repeatedly in the headlines these days, don't value any life, not even the innocent and not even their own.

I know that the Bush Administration likes to bring every question back to the War on Terror, but this crosses a line I didn't think even they were capable of crossing. The majority of Americans who support legal abortion are like al-Qaeda because they hate freedom and want to limit people's choices, wait, because they believe that men should have control of women's reproductive capacity, no, because they don't care about killing innocents. Man, she must've really stretched for that one.

The ironic thing, of course, is that there have been multiple acts of terrorism committed by one side in the abortion debate: hers. Let's look at the FBI's definition of terrorism:

"The unlawful use of force against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population or any segment thereof, in the furtherance of political or social objectives". This definition includes three elements: (1) Terrorist activities are illegal and involve the use of force. (2) The actions are intended to intimidate or coerce. (3) The actions are committed in support of political or social objectives.

Now let's look at the examples of Chuck Spingola, Clayton Waagner, Paul Hill, James Kopp, and Eric Rudolph, all of whom have killed abortion providers or made terroristic threats against clinics. They - among many others - attempted to end women's access to legal abortions through violence, threats, and intimidation, and they were funded, supported, and defended by anti-abortion organizations. Now let's look at the other side, at a list of pro-choice activists who have used violence and illegal acts to intimidate or coerce the general public into supporting their positions: _____________

Finally, let's look one more time at the words of anti-abortion Karen Hughes: "[antiabortion policies] are the kind of policies that the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy, and really the fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."