Juan Cole – Abortion Clinics, White Christian Terrorism and GOP Candidates

Americans are more at risk from violence by armed white Christian fanatics than they ever were from Muslims.

Abortion clinics have been targeted for violence by fundamentalist Christians of a violent bent for decades.  In 2009, Dr. George Tiller was relentlessly shot to death by Scott Roeder, who insisted that the good doctor was satanic because he performed abortions.  Dr. John Britton was murdered in 1994 on similar grounds.  A strain of Christianity in the United States has never accepted Roe v. Wade, which made it a woman’s right to have an abortion.  Not accepting it for oneself is a matter of conscience, and there is nothing wrong with that.  But not accepting it for other people is a form of coercion aimed at depriving them of a legal right.

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