Center for Reproductive Rights: RH Reality Check: It's Time to End the Stigma Against Abortion Providers, by Katrina Anderson:
06.17.11 - A lucky misfire in a Madison, Wisconsin motel saved potentially scores of lives recently. Police arrived on the scene to find Ralph Lang armed with a .38 caliber gun and 35 bullets he intended to use to murder reproductive healthcare providers at Planned Parenthood affiliates in Madison, and then Milwaukee. Lang said his purpose was to "line them all up in a row, get a machine gun and mow them all down.”
Falling days before the second anniversary of Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller’s assassination, Ralph’s Lang misfire should be greeted with more than just a sigh of relief. The murder of Dr. Tiller in 2009 sparked a short-lived, narrowly focused debate about the relationship between extremist rhetoric and violence: Did right-wing commentators like Bill O’Reilly, who said that anyone who didn’t stop Tiller would have “blood on their hands,” bear some responsibility in inciting the murder? Notably absent was an honest stock-taking of the government’s responsibility to nurture a culture of respect for providers and the rights they defend by setting concrete laws to protect their practice and their lives….
Added by BS on 6/22/11