Last Friday's tragic shooting at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado alerted many to just how much violence women's health clinics face in America.
While we were all horrified by the news, those who work closely with or volunteer at women's health clinics were not surprised by it. It was one more attack in a long string of endless attacks that they and their colleagues have endured over the years.
Enduring threats of violence is a fact of life for many abortion and women's health care providers. Many work at these clinics behind bulletproof glass and even wear bulletproof vests on the job, as the Guardian reports. The Daily Intelligencer reported that the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood has safe rooms that came in handy during the shooting.
Three people were killed in a shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood on Nov. 27, 2015. Photo by Justin Edmonds/Getty Images News.
In the aftermath of Friday's shooting, some women's health workers shared stories of the violence (threatened or otherwise) they face every day.
Writer Bryn Greenwood tweeted about the violence she witnessed while working and volunteering at abortion clinics in Kansas, including with Dr. George Tiller, who was shot and killed by an anti-choice activist at his church in 2009.
Clinic escort Michelle Kinsey Bruns tweeted a string of 100 violent incidents that abortion providers have faced since the 1970s.
Bruns, who goes by @ClinicEscort on Twitter, decided to become a clinic escort for abortion patients after Dr. Tiller's murder.
Using the hashtag #is100enough to call attention to the fact that even one attack should be enough to create change, she tweeted about incidents from March 1976 to Nov. 29, 2015.
"The antichoice tweets of the last 24 hours fall into two categories: [1] people who are doubling down on the justifiability of pro-life murder, and [2] people who are flat-out denying objective reality," Bruns told Upworthy in an email.
While she hoped her tweets conveyed the frequency and severity of the violence that clinic workers, health providers, and patients face every day, "I can't help people who apparently won't even click into a thread with 100 citations," Bruns said.
But what Bruns said she didn't see in her Twitter mentions is even one anti-choice supporter saying that, yes, they believe abortion is wrong, "but so are the tactics of my movement.'"
After Bruns' #is100enough history lesson, she said, anti-choice critics began falling silent.
"By Sunday, when the shooter's 'no more baby parts' comment was leaked (and when I began tweeting my 100 selected examples of antichoice terror tactics), anti-choice Twitter was conspicuously silent," she said. "Only a few doubled down. On Friday, I got hundreds of belligerent antichoice tweets. On Sunday, I got a few dozen."
The accused Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooter, Robert Lewis Dear, allegedly told police "no more baby parts" when he surrendered, a clear reference to the falsified and heavily edited videos released by an anti-choice organization in July that appeared to show Planned Parenthood officials selling fetal parts.
Planned Parenthood shooting suspect Robert Lewis Dear. Photo via Getty Images News.
Even though these videos were debunked, they were a main focus at the first Republican presidential debate, where candidate Carly Fiorina spoke of them as though they were true, and she continues to maintain that she was right about what they showed despite not being able to produce the footage requested. A video that her PAC produced in support of her statements showed a stillborn baby that was passed off as an aborted fetus, which had been included without the mother's permission.
In the four months since the misleading videos were released, the FBI reported a noticeable increase in attacks at reproductive health care facilities, as Vox points out. Four of these incidents were against specific Planned Parenthood locations.
In the aftermath of this shooting, Bruns says she wants to see a turning point in the abortion conversation.
"This country has made so many compromises on reproductive freedom that maybe people are realizing that there's no more room to compromise without giving it all away entirely," she said.
The anti-choice movement might not want to be affiliated with Robert Lewis Dear, but it's clear that its rhetoric influenced his behavior, as it has influenced over 100 others before him. We have made enough compromises. 1 in 3 women will get an abortion in her lifetime. It's time to change the conversation.
As Bruns put it:
"We need to elect some pro-choice women. We need to bring up the abortion storylines on Scandal or Jessica Jones in casual conversations. We need to call our City Council members and say, 'Actually, I DO want a clinic in our town.' We need to support, not shame, people who have abortions. We need to tell Uncle Boyd that he's wrong about the kinds of women who have abortions, or why. We need to tell Uncle Boyd that even if 'those women' have abortions for 'those reasons,' it's their God-given right to make family decisions that are right for them."
Until we do, people like Dear will continue this brand of homegrown terrorism. And as Bruns' hashtag asks, if 100 attacks isn't enough, what is?