Why is it that the media and the government never calls the “pro-life” groups who plant bombs at women’s clinics what they are: terrorists?
From the AP article, entitled “Explosive found at Austin women’s clinic”:
AUSTIN — A package left at a women’s clinic that performs abortions contained an explosive device capable of inflicting serious injury or death, investigators said today.
“It was in fact an explosive device,” said {the} assistant chief of the Austin Police Department. “It was configured in such a way to cause serious bodily injury or death.”
...A nearby apartment complex was evacuated while a bomb squad detonated the device.
Had that bomb been found outside a post office or a school, the headlines would have been hysterically running on about ... TERRORISM TERRORISM IS AL QAEDA INVOLVED? And the right-wing warbloggers would be pissing their pants and hyperventilating about profiling Arabs and banning Muslims from public life ... and how if they had been there, they’d have stopped it with their concealed carry and their extra-super special powers of righteousness, just like they saw in a movie once and BOMB IRAN! and 9/11 CHANGED EVERYTHING!!! ...
But it’s an abortion clinic, so. Ho-hum.
For some reason,
terrorism doesn’t count if it’s directed against women and their health care providers. It’s just not news, and the fact that it goes unremarked in the ... media contributes to the idea that women are not important and that violence directed at women is not only to be expected, but to be dismissed. As Keely Savoie noted on WIMN’s Voices,
The national press? Aside from 97 words from the AP and a brief mention from CNN — nothing... Still, not a peep from the national press. Now, imagine if this clinic had been a bank, or a high school, or a sports arena. I bet we would have heard something about it then.
The media’s silence surrounding issues of violence against women is not only emblematic of a fundamentally dismissive attitude, it ultimately harms all feminist causes, and lends to the perception that feminists are all just knee-jerk alarmists railing against imaginary enemies. It’s easier to dismiss the need to constitutionally protect women from violence and discrimination if you erase all evidence that such things exist.
... Clinic bombings are treated as the equivalent of shrugged-off “domestic incidents” — hey, it’s just violence against women. It’s not like it’s going to affect real people or anything.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/04/27/the-terrorism-that-dare-not-speak-its-name/
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