Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Calls Grow to Define Clinic Attacks as Domestic Terrorism

WASHINGTON — Abortion-rights groups stepped up a campaign Wednesday to persuade the Department of Justice to define attacks on abortion clinics as acts of domestic terrorism.

The groups, led by Naral Pro-Choice America, sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch last week — two days before the shootings at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs — asking that the department “investigate the recent attacks on reproductive-health clinics using all appropriate federal statutes, including domestic terrorism.”

Ilyse Hogue, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said Wednesday that the group had started the campaign in October in response to escalating threats and attacks on abortion clinics. She tied the escalation to the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group that has released secretly made videos over the past few months, purporting to show that Planned Parenthood has illegally profited from selling tissue from aborted fetuses to researchers. Planned Parenthood has denied the charges and called the videos deceptive.

“This is the absolute definition of domestic terrorism,” Ms. Hogue said, referring to the Colorado attack, which killed three people and wounded nine others. “It must be called out as such.”

Ms. Hogue said more than 140 organizations and abortion providers had signed the letter.

The man accused of the shootings, Robert L. Dear Jr., 57, has been charged with first-degree murder. Senior officials in the Justice Department have said they are considering whether to bring federal charges against Mr. Dear. Though the motive in the shootings remains unclear, people who know Mr. Dear well say he has long been fervently opposed to abortion.

Shaunna Thomas, co-executive director of UltraViolet, a women’s rights advocacy group that participated in the call, said that by investigating violence against abortion clinics as domestic terrorism, the federal government could bring additional resources to state and local investigations and examine possible connections between attacks in different states.

“Is there a driving connection between all these attacks that are happening?” Ms. Thomas asked. “If so, what is it? Who is it?”

She added, “Right now, those questions are not being asked, nor are local investigators empowered to investigate it at that level.”

Asked for comment on the campaign, Dena Iverson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, pointed to a statement that John Walsh, United States attorney for the District of Colorado, issued about the Colorado Springs shootings on Saturday. Mr. Walsh said his office and federal law enforcement officials were working “in close support” of state and local law enforcement in response to the attack.

In October, the Justice Department said it was creating a special counsel position to help oversee the prosecution of cases around the country involving domestic terrorism. Both the Democratic governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper, and the Republican mayor of Colorado Springs, John Suthers, said the Planned Parenthood shootings appeared to be a form of terrorism.

In a speech announcing the new position, John P. Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security, defined domestic terrorism as “illegal activities that are dangerous to human life that take place primarily here in the United States and appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a government.”

While domestic terrorism “is not an offense or a charge,” he said, “Instead, we have the whole criminal code at our disposal.”

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT