Today in Totally Not Terrorism

[Trigger warning for anti-choice terrorism.]

There are a lot of things that don't get called terrorism in this country, but chief among them is the anti-choice movement, which is the most brazen, unapologetic terrorist campaign in the US, its co-ordination and orchestration done right out in the open, where no one in the media or politics will call it what it is. It is an inherently violent ideology, backed by a decades-long campaign of intimidation, harassment and violence directed at abortion providers and abortion seekers, that is ignored by one party and mainstreamed as a central plank of its party platform by the other.

Tuesday night, in McKinney, Texas, another Planned Parenthood clinic was the target of another incident of Totally Not Terrorism, during which, fortunately, no one was physically injured:

A heavy glass door is all that stood between damaging flames threatening a family planning clinic in McKinney and an arsonist's sights.

McKinney police and fire crews responded to a small fire that broke out around 10:05 p.m. Tuesday at the front door of the Planned Parenthood clinic, located in a block of stories in the 1700 block of Eldorado Parkway, clinic, police and fire officials confirmed on Wednesday.

...Holly Morgan, director of communications for Planned Parenthood of North Texas in Dallas, said the person or persons involved in the attack threw a Molotov cocktail, consisting of diesel fuel in a glass bottle with a lit rag, at the clinic's front door.

...The incident is also unique because the McKinney location does not provide surgical procedures or abortions for their approximately 4,000 clients, Morgan said.

"It's an all-preventive care location: well-woman visits, breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control," she said. "They don't provide legal safe abortions, only preventive care."

This shit doesn't happen in a void. Now even clinics that are providing exclusively preventative care to women are being targeted by terrorists because of the incendiary rhetoric of Republicans across the nation who demonize abortion, demonize abortion providers and abortion seekers, and mendaciously frame Planned Parenthood as an abortion mill.

As an interesting side note, the original URL at which this story appears to have been located now takes you to a story about a local town winning an award for online financial transparency. That story also appears in their Most Popular, Most Emailed, and Most Commented sections, which seems wildly unlikely given the content.

The mysterious switcheroo happened after Ben Armbruster linked to it from Think Progress. (I mentioned it to him this morning, and now his piece has been updated with the correct link, which he also helpfully provided to me.) Naturally, I can certainly imagine how and why such a mysterious switcheroo might have happened, although I'm quite certain such expressions of cynicism would be resoundingly dismissed as the fantastic hysteria typical of people who write about Lady Business.