Several national journalists are openly questioning whether “rhetoric” from anti-abortion Republican presidential candidates had anything to do with the mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood center in Colorado Springs, Colo., last week.
Multiple news reports said the alleged shooter, 57-year-old Robert Dear, told police after he was apprehended, “No more baby parts.” That’s an apparent reference to several sting videos that purport to show Planned Parenthood officials capitalizing on the sale of fetus tissue to a fake medical company.
Because anti-abortion GOP presidential candidates and Republicans on Capitol Hill have in the past called for cutting Planned Parenthood’s federal funding, journalists and news anchors suggested the shooting might have somehow been a consequence of those calls.
“The [‘no more baby parts’] phrase was an eerie echo of language used by politicians here and in many state capitals since an anti-abortion group began releasing its undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing possible donations of fetal tissue for medical research,” said an article in the New York Times on Sunday.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” host Chuck Todd asked Donald Trump if “the rhetoric got out of hand on Planned Parenthood.”
John Dickerson of CBS’s “Face the Nation” asked Ben Carson if anti-abortion activists and politicians should “tone down their rhetoric” as a result of the shooting.
Carly Fiorina delivered one of the most memorable rebukes of Planned Parenthood of the campaign so far during the second GOP debate in September.
Describing in graphic detail the idea of a baby being kept alive to have its brain harvested for medical research, she challenged President Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to watch the videos. “This is about the character of our nation,” Fiorina said, to applause from the debate audience.
On “Fox News Sunday,” anchor Chris Wallace told Fiorina that “some of the pro-choice advocates” believe her anti-abortion language “has incited violence.”
Since the shooting, which left three people dead and several more injured, many of the direct accusations against the GOP have come from Planned Parenthood itself.
On Sunday, after several of the Republican presidential candidates made public comments to condemn the violence, Planned Parenthood released a statement that said the candidates were “repeating the same hateful rhetoric repeated by the shooter …”
“It is offensive and outrageous that some politicians are now claiming this tragedy has nothing to do with the toxic environment they helped create,” the statement said.
Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, reinforced the idea that “hateful rhetoric” was at least somewhat related to the shooting.
“I think it’s important to recognize words matter,” she said on NPR. “And when you use this kind of hateful rhetoric — whether you’re a politician or whether you’re in elective office or whether you’re an opposition group — this kind of rhetoric toward doctors and women seeking healthcare has real impact and I think folks should think carefully about what they say …”
The group and members of the press were also being backed by some Democratic politicians. On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the shooting at the clinic needs to be seen in the “context” of GOP attacks on Planned Parenthood.
“Whipping people into a frenzy of hate and anger and providing them with easy access to firearms has proven disastrous to our country,” he said on the Senate floor.
