Friday, April 27, 2007

Terrorism - Yawn



This is the reaction of the mainstream press when a bomb is found at an abortion clinic unless someone has been killed. Feministe wrote about it today:

Why is it that the media and the government never calls the "pro-life" groups who plant bombs at women's clinics what they are: terrorists?

From the AP article, entitled "Explosive found at Austin women's clinic":

AUSTIN — A package left at a women's clinic that performs abortions contained an explosive device capable of inflicting serious injury or death, investigators said today.

"It was in fact an explosive device," said David Carter, assistant chief of the Austin Police Department. "It was configured in such a way to cause serious bodily injury or death."

The package was found Wednesday in a parking lot outside the Austin Women's Health Center, south of downtown Austin.

Nearby Interstate 35 was briefly closed, and a nearby apartment complex was evacuated while a bomb squad detonated the device.

Actually, I shouldn't say "from" the AP article. Because that was the whole thing.

And so did Scott Lemieux on the TAPPED:

After [all], as five reactionary lawyers on the Supreme Court have just informed us, you have to be crazy if you want to obtain an abortion anyway, so what's the big deal?

It is indeed true that terrorism against abortion clinics is not treated as real terrorism. Some Americans believe that such terrorism is justified and others are just used to the idea. As long as the bombs are not going to threaten anyone else, who really cares, outside the group who knows people actually working in or visiting those sites? Rheality Check has more on this whole "non-issue".