Firebombing at Abortion Clinic: Why the Silence?

In Shreveport, Louisiana, someone tried to firebomb an abortion clinic. Do you remember reading or hearing about this on the news? Probably not - despite the fact that it was likely an act of terrorism and the fact that it's been a while since anyone has attacked an abortion clinic, the media has remained largely silent on the story. Why?

KTBS reports:

Security camera videotape, released by investigators today, shows a car pull into the parking lot and a woman get out on the passenger side. She is seen throwing the device at the clinic and then fleeing. ...

“This is not a crime to be taken lightly,” Shreveport Fire Department spokesman Brian Crawford said. “It’s an arson crime -- and because of the nature of this crime, someone could also be charged with domestic terrorism as well.”

So, this is likely a terrorist incident, but no one is talking about it. Why?

Frederick Clarkson comments on the story:

[A]ntiabortion violence has become a public relations inconvenience for the broad theocratic movement in its several parts -- which would prefer not to have terrorism associated with it’s cause. It is also political inconvenience for the Bush administration, which has built so much of it’s identity based on the fight against terrorism. Even as it has done a good job on the antiabortion violence front, it has downplayed it as much as possible. After all, militant opposition to abortion is integral to the the GOP electoral base these days. Where the media was on this, I don’t know.

One can only imagine what would have happened if say, a seeming Islamic person had tossed a firebomb at say, an airliner. There has always been a deep double standard in how antiabortion violence is treated by society at all levels.

It’s unlikely that the firebombers were Muslim. They certainly were Buddhist, Hindu, or atheist. There can be little doubt, I think, that the firebombers were Christian — conservative, evangelical Christian, too. That would make them Christian terrorists. Imagine if the news media reported this story and talked about the potential impact of likely Christian terrorists on the availability of abortion.

Yes, I suppose it is stretching things to imagine the news media actually doing their job...

 

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