Here’s a video about the vandalism of a clinic in Kalispell, Montana, one that provides abortions along with other healthcare. Some anti-choice terrorist lunkhead broke every single glass object and sprinkled some kind of yellow powder over everything in the clinic. Here’s a little bit about the suspect, from the Montana Cowgirl blog:
Zachary Klundt is the son of a woman named Twyla Klundt, who is on the board of Hope Pregnancy Ministries which is affiliated with a fake women’s clinic called Clear Choice–which is a so-called “crisis pregnancy center,” MHRN [Montana Human Rights Network] reports.
As you can imagine, “Hope Pregnancy Ministries” is “Hope you Don’t Get an Abortion Pregnancy Ministries”, one of those shady places that crop up around every abortion clinic, and whose interest in women’s health is focused strictly on keeping the fetus in utero for the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.
If the son of some anti-gun activist had broken into a gun shop and vandalized the place like this, Fox would have gone 24/7 coverage on this violation of a constitutional right, and they’d treating the anti-gun organization like the local branch of the bin Laden fan club. Instead, this story didn’t go beyond the local news. If you’re interested in helping out Susan Cahill, who runs the clinic and wrote this sad letter to her local paper, here’s where you can kick in. And take a look at a map to see just how important it is that her clinic survives in a place as remote as Kalispell.
(via Dan Savage)
Fuzzy
Protect the unborn at all costs but once the miracle of birth occurs you are on your own except for the right to shoot anyone who threatens you. Susan Cahill should of shot the intruder and watch the local GOP wonder who to support. Stand your ground at and abortion clinic could force their brains to explode.
Thoughtful David
This is what hacks me off about the Liberal Media. It is exactly correct that if this had happened at a gun shop Fox News would be all over it. But so would every other of the MSM.
This is clearly an act of terrorism. Whoever did it was trying to terrify those who run the clinic, and probably did so. Yet there will be nothing outside of Kalispell about it in the news.
If we had decent news media, …but we don’t.
c u n d gulag
@Thoughtful David:
Our MSM’s not only cowardly, but compliant and complicit, as well.
That’s what we get for allowing only a handful of corporations and rich individuals to own 90% of all of our news sources.
And as for the reporters, they don’t report on what they’re paid NOT TO report on.
Our “Fourth Estate” makes me want to down a fifth every day.
Ok – make that a liter…
Thoughtful David
@c u n d gulag: Yup. I place most of the nation’s problems at the feet of the MSM. I don’t disagree that the MSM are cowards, but I lean more on the “complicit.” For the reasons you list as well. They’ve bought into the right-wing narrative, and promote it constantly.
Thoughtful David
@c u n d gulag: Although I lean more on “complicit,” cowardice does have its role. Example: Glenn Kessler (whom I detest as a perfect example of MSM complicity–and cowardice) today has a fact-checker column in WaPo giving the Senate Majority PAC (Democratic) 4 pinocchios for an ad against some wingnut in Louisiana. So why did he feel the need to address this particular ad? Well, last week he was forced to address some of Paul Ryan’s outright lies. So this week, to remain “fair and balanced,” he has to attack a liberal group. He’s always very careful to alternate his awarding of pinocchios between wingnuts and liberals. Despite the clear evidence that both sides don’t actually do it.
OzarkHillbilly
I don’t know what you people are so upset about. He was just exercising his constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion.
c u n d gulag
A link from the GREAT Charles Pierce, on his friend, and former journalist, Joseph Williams, who lost his job at Politico because he pissed-off Mitt, and the Reich-Wing Wurlitzer:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/my-life-as-a-retail-worker-nasty-brutish-and-poor/284332/
This, THIS, is why our MSM reporters are cowardly, compliant, and complicit!!!
They don’t want to end up working in retail, if they lose their high-paying job.
greenergood
“The only moral abortion is my abortion” http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/anti-tales.html
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
What religion is this, in which breaking and entering, theft, and vandalism are commandments? Does its god look like Willie Sutton?
Villago Delenda Est
Another example is the FBI’s most wanted “domestic terrorist” is an animal rights guy who is accused of exploding some pipe bombs. Meanwhile, forced birth assholes skate, because even though they engage in textbook terrorism, they’re not nearly as bad as this guy, because, well, “animal rights” is one of those leftist things, ya know.
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid: Willie Sutton is as good as any one else.
Villago Delenda Est
@Fuzzy: Susan Cahill is not a white christian straight male. Therefore if she indeed stood her ground, she’d be prosecuted for voluntary manslaughter, at a minimum, because freedumb.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: Pick one, any of them. They all have a plenty of examples of extremism. As far as I am concerned they are all about the same and none of them are worth a plugged nickel.
c u n d gulag
@PurpleGirl:
Yeah, at least he never killed anyone when he was robbing banks and other places.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Thanks for this, mm. I sent them $50.
No matter how one feels about “souls” and when a human person “begins” (um, a working sperm cell is “alive”), one should recognize that vigilante violence is a threat to everyone (especially those who are members of minorities or holding unpopular views).
Here’s hoping this incident and her strong reaction to it gets more visibility and encourages more to push back against this violence and intimidation.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kathleen
@c u n d gulag: That is such a depressing story on so many levels, including the few comments I was able to stomach.
Tommy
Bill Maher had an author on this week, talking about the fact there are too many people on the planet. Bill was like what do we do? The guy said something I don’t think I had ever heard said before. He said if you want women to have less children, start by giving them an education. No single factor points to less children, planned children, then education.
I thought for a few seconds maybe even the far right could get behind that concept, since family planning and birth control doesn’t work for them. But I only had that idea for a few seconds, cause I bet they’d find something to be mad about.
Quinnie
I lived in Montana for 12 years, and when I needed an abortion I had to drive 2 hours to Helena. I was married, the timing was all wrong, and my husband and I decided together. Yes, married people get abortions. Birth control sometimes fails. It was kind of amazing to me to me that it was an option at all in such a conservative state. I was able to take time off and drive that far. So many women in Montana don’t have the option or the resources.
Thanks for covering this. I donated.
Citizen_X
@Tommy:
Well, yes, because those educated women will need to control their family planning…through access to birth control and abortion.
Citizen_X
Stupid kundt.
Ruckus
@Tommy:
Conservatives don’t want everyone to be well educated because it is harder to control a well educated person. A well educated person knows history and knows that authoritarian assholes are just that. At some point they will walk (or join/organize a union. A UNION for god sakes!) rather than suffer that crap paying job.
Tommy
@Ruckus: Oh don’t get me started on Unions. Mom was over the other day. An educated and dare I say smart women. She asked me if I was thinking of going back to work for a company, cause I’d need a pension to retire. I was like Mom, what world do you live in? Nobody gets pensions anymore. That is why I rant to you about minimum wage, the importance of Unions, and the 1% (which my parents are part of). I went on to explain to her that myself and my brother will most likely work most if not almost all of our life if we want to maintain the lifestyle we have now. She was confused.
Fuzzy
@Tommy: If your parents are in that 1% then when you inherit those assets your pension woes are all taken care of and you can join the GOP to ensure the income will continue unless of course they just spend it all. tsk tsk.
El Cid
Life is sacred until birth. At which point, guns are sacred.
Anoniminous
The funding link only asks for $25,000. Going to take more than that to get the place back up and running.
Nutella
@Tommy:
This has been a well-known fact in academic population policy circles for at least 40 years but somehow it never gets into actual political policies, even political policies whose explicit purpose is to control population. The idea of empowering women terrifies most male politicians.
currants
@Nutella: @Tommy:
EDUCATION?? Lawsy me, we don’t want no educashun fer no wimminfolks.
Seriously: the right has been about the business of dismantling public education (k-12 AND higher) for quite some time now. Was it not just this past week that some elected official (R-LeftBehind) commented that public ed was an awful lot like socialism? Maybe I should snopes that–could be was someone trolling. Nonetheless, the effects are apparent all over the US (except in wealthy school districts, natch).
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: and @Quinnie: Me too. My donations are small, but more and more go to such causes. On that note (on this long-dead thread…sorry so late to the party), I’ll put in a plug for Medical Students for Choice, educating abortion providers and pro-choice physicians.
currants
@Thoughtful David: have read some (but not all) the links–it’s not clear to me why they are calling it a ‘hate crime’ and NOT terrorism. That said, ‘hate crime’ is better than ‘vandalism.’
low-tech cyclist
@El Cid:
Hey, I know! What we should do is relabel gun deaths as “post-birth abortions” which would at least make the wingnuts’ heads explode.
On an unrelated subject, but kind of along the same idea, we should circulate a story in the blogosphere that the Federal government is pumping chemicals into the ground all over the country, but the nature of the chemicals in question is classified.
Once they bite, we say, “oops, our bad – we meant ‘the oil and gas industry’ and ‘a trade secret,’ not ‘the Federal government’ and ‘classified.’ So are you still just as mad, or does that somehow make it all okay?”
low-tech cyclist
@Anoniminous:
Probably. At any rate, they’ve currently raised nearly $33,000 – I didn’t let the fact that they’d already met their goal keep me from chipping in; if the clinic in Kalispell doesn’t need the excess, I bet they know a clinic that does.
I’ve got a fondness for that corner of the world. It’s been almost nine years since I’ve been up that way, and I need to get back. Get a big breakfast at the Buffalo Cafe in Whitefish, hike the Highline Trail, then finish off the day with beer and one of those amazing pizzas at Truby’s in Columbia Falls.
Or maybe ride a pygmy pony and check out the dental floss crop.
low-tech cyclist
And yeah, this is terrorism, just like all the other violent assaults on abortion clinics, and assaults on and murders of abortion providers. The object is to make everyone else fear that if they provide abortions, then bad shit like that might happen to them. That’s pretty much the textbook definition of terrorism, isn’t it?
Cris (without an H)
The only silver lining of the clinic break-in is that as a result, the 40 Days For Life people called off their demonstration, so I don’t have to put up with those people in my neighborhood this year.