One front of the eternal war on women is Planned Parenthood clinics.
The shooting Friday at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was horrifying, but according to a former Planned Parenthood worker, it wasn’t shocking. Instead, the former employee said, the attack that left three people dead was a continuation of decades of extremist tactics directed at the health care organization’s facilities, staff, volunteers and patients.
Author Bryn Greenwood, who tweeted that she worked at a Kansas Planned Parenthood facility for three years, said on Twitter that, in her experience, regular acts of violence, intimidation, arson and vandalism were common.
Because women have to be kept under control, obedient, submissive, dominated. Women have to remember at all times that they don’t count as fully human.
According to Greenwood, her clinic was targeted with small explosive devices, threats, stink bombs and gunfire. in one attack, an arsonist poured gasoline under the doors and set it on fire. All this at a clinic that, according to Greenwood, did not even provide abortion services.
Doesn’t matter. Collateral damage.
In an interview with Mic, Greenwood confirmed her dates of employment and position at Planned Parenthood.
She said that the first arson attempt at the clinic “occurred when I was sitting in my office, about twenty feet down the hallway. The alarm went off, we evacuated patients and called 911. I like to think I was calm, but it was the first time I ever felt truly threatened.”
Greenwood added that in her role at the clinic, “I heard some harsh things. Sometimes at community fair events, people walked by my table and said things like, ‘jezebel’ or ‘baby killer.’ I had many more people politely tell me they thought sex education in schools was wrong. I even had teachers tell me that.”
Greenwood’s tweets are part of a wider conversation happening on social media to remind people that Friday’s attack, while jarring, is just the latest in a long history of threats on Planned Parenthood clinics and employees. In the aftermath of the Colorado attack, feminist activist Michelle Kinsey Bruns, who uses the Twitter handle ClinicEscort, rapidly churned out 100 tweets detailing Planned Parenthood’s history with violence, dating back to 1976.
I have to go read those tweets now.