The Return of Pro-Life Terrorism, continued

This is hardly an original point, but this isn’t the first time an abortion provider has been killed by right-wing  domestic terrorists.  Wikipedia has the details:

According to statistics gathered by the National Abortion Federation (NAF), an organization of abortion providers, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, there have been 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery, and 3 kidnappings committed against abortion providers.

In the United States, anti-abortion violence has claimed seven lives (including that of Dr. Tiller) since 1993. As you can probably imagine, most instances of anti-abortion terrorism involve arsons and bombings.  Between 1976 and 2009, the NAF recorded well over 300 cases of bombing and arson against abortion providers, costing clinics millions of dollars of property damage, and causing dozens of injuries and a few lost lives.  In fact, this only touches the tip of the iceberg – there have been over 6000 incidents of violence or intimidation against abortion clinics. Here is the NAF’s list:

• 7 cases of murder
• 17 attempted murders
• 390 invasions
• 1400 cases of vandalism
• 1993 cases of trespassing
• 100 butryic acid attacks
• 659 anthrax threats
• 179 cases of assault and battery
• 406 death threats
• 4 cases of kidnapping
• 151 cases of burglary
• 525 cases of stalking

It’s worth noting that this is an incredibly effective form of terrorism.  As Matt Yglesias explains:

Every time you murder a doctor, you create a disincentive for other medical professionals to provide these services. What’s more, you create a need for additional security at facilities around the country. In addition, the anti-abortion protestors who frequently gather near clinics are made to seem much more intimidating by the fact that the occurrence of these sorts of acts of violence.

In a sane political environment, this is the kind of thing would demand the attention of liberals and conservatives; political violence has no place in a democratic society, and we’re all obligated to speak out against it when it occurs.  Unfortunately, conservatives don’t seem particularly interested in clamping down on anti-abortion terrorism.  During the Bush administration, domestic terrorism expert Dave Neiwert devoted a considerable amount of time to investigating the administration’s unwillingness to devote considerable resources to monitoring right-wing extremists.  More recently is the Republican freak out over revelations that the Department of Homeland Security was monitoring said extremists, leading department head Janet Napolitano to withdraw the bulletin in order to avoid further criticism.

In short, while we can expect Republicans to offer condolences to the Tiller family and condemn pro-life extremists, I doubt that we will see any real cooperation on efforts to actually monitor and preempt domestic terrorists, judging from past behavior.  The simple fact is that hard-right extremists are a non-negligible part of the Republican base, which – unfortunately – makes a fair number of Republicans unwilling to take substantive, affirmative measures towards stopping this violence.