Calls Grow to Define Clinic Attacks as Domestic Terrorism
WASHINGTON — Abortion-rights groups stepped up a campaign Wednesday to persuade the Department of Justice to define attacks on abortion clinics as acts of domestic terrorism.
The groups, led by Naral Pro-Choice America, sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch last week — two days before the shootings at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs — asking that the department “investigate the recent attacks on reproductive-health clinics using all appropriate federal statutes, including domestic terrorism.”
Ilyse Hogue, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said Wednesday that the group had started the campaign in October in response to escalating threats and attacks on abortion clinics. She tied the escalation to the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group that has released secretly made videos over the past few months, purporting to show that Planned Parenthood has illegally profited from selling tissue from aborted fetuses to researchers. Planned Parenthood has denied the charges and called the videos deceptive.
More: Calls Grow to Define Clinic Attacks as Domestic Terrorism - the New York Times