It should be obvious that anti-choice violence is a form of terrorism -- it fits every definition I've ever seen, including the official definitions used by the government. For some reason, though, the U.S. government's database on global terrorism doesn't include the regular attacks and murders committed against abortion providers in the United States. Acts committed by Muslims are included of course, but violence committed by Christians are excluded. Coincidence?
A search of "abortion" in the Worldwide Incidents Tracking System, a database created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks by the National Counterterrorism Center, brings up just two abortion-related incidents -- one of them in Nepal.
Though the database includes the 2009 murder of prominent abortion doctor George Tiller by an anti-abortion extremist, it is effectively whitewashed, making no reference to abortion in the entire entry. In the summary, Tiller is described merely as a "medical doctor," even though he and his clinic had been a target of anti-abortion activists for years.
The only other domestic case of abortion related violence in the WITS database took place on the fifth anniversary of the al-Qaeda attack that led to NCTC's creation. The incident on Sept. 11, 2006, involved a man who crashed a gasoline-soaked car into a Davenport, Iowa, women's health clinic that he mistakenly thought performed abortions.
In all, the government database includes 34 terrorism cases in the United States between 2004 and 2010, the majority of which involve property damage, but no victims.
But it doesn't include the 2007 attempted bombing of an abortion clinic in Austin, Texas. William Pierce, the attack's perpetrator, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the crime. There also isn't any mention of a bullet fired through the front door of Planned Parenthood of Indiana's offices in Bloomington in 2005.
Source: Huffington Post
Carl Kropf of the National Counterterrorism Center points out their database uses the definition of terrorism et forth in U.S. Code, Title 22, Section 2656: "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents." That definitely applies to anti-choice groups which use premeditated violence designed to bring about the political goal of eliminating access to abortion.
Kropf cannot explain, however, why all the anti-choice terrorism committed by Christians has been excluded from his database. Might it have something to do with the government being afraid of what Christians would do if their terrorism were accurately designated as terrorism? When the government is too afraid to label terrorists as terrorists, then the terrorists are definitely winning -- and this is definitely a case where the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms.
But our "liberal" government is more interested in placating and accommodating the terrorists than doing anything to confront and stop them. Sounds a lot like the White House strategy for dealing with the conservative Republicans in Congress, too, come to think of it. Seems like there's a pattern there.
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