This editorial isn’t going to be about the need for greater gun control, seeing as it is redundant, worn and torn territory. You, the readers, already know the details: a white, male gunman on the fringes of society. A specifically chosen location. Innocent lives lost and wounded. A mass shooting in Colorado.
What separates this editorial from others of its ilk is a degree of clarity. For the first time in a while, the motivations behind the Planned Parenthood outburst of American terrorism can be tied directly back to a specific source of inspiration. As widely reported, the gunman muttered "no more baby parts" after surrendering to police officers.
It is likely the gunman’s comments — and, thereby, his motivation for the shooting — were derived from videos released earlier this year that purportedly showed a Planned Parenthood executive talking about selling aborted fetus tissue for profit. This, of course, turned out to be false. Investigations by several independent agencies found that the videos, released by the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress, had been heavily edited and omitted phrases that verified what many have known all along: Like other medical facilities, Planned Parenthood donates body tissue for scientific research, and the only costs involved are those concerning transportation and preservation. This is not done for a profit and has the full consent and knowledge of the women involved.
Although the contentious issue at the heart of these videos has been thoroughly debunked time and again, the idea persists that Planned Parenthood — which must be noted is well within its legal rights to provide abortions, as well as the countless other health services offered to men and women — is an evil, immoral, deliberately anti-Christian institution profiting off our nation’s dead babies. Because the moral crusaders and panderers of the right have never been ones to let pesky facts and legal precedents stand in the way of their pursuits to completely regulate women’s bodies, the videos have remained a key component of the ill-thought-out testimony against Planned Parenthood.
And so, here we are. After many months of debating, committees and hearings, the deceptive rhetoric of these videos has helped justify one man’s decision to murder others. In the days since the attack, most GOP presidential candidates have either remained silent on the issue or distanced themselves from the connections between the values they espouse and those of the shooter (Mike Huckabee excluded).
Sen. Ted Cruz described the attacker as a "transgendered leftist activist." That seems to be at odds with the description provided by the wife of the shooter, who described him as a "generally conservative" man who "believed wholeheartedly in the Bible," but sure, why not? In a move demonstrating no less tact than that of Cruz, Carly Fiorina equated the shooter to a "protester," and dismissed any connections between the attack and the rhetoric of the right as "typical left-wing tactics."
For a party that routinely calls on an entire religion to decry the horrific actions of a fringe faction that terrorizes others under the pretense of shared ideals, Republican politicians seem awfully reluctant to practice what they preach. If we are to truly believe the GOP represents those who are "pro-life," even the most minuscule of ideological concessions is in order. Until then, we remain skeptical.
