After weeks of campaigning by the GOP presidential candidates, competing to show who could take the hardest line against Planned Parenthood, a bomb went off at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Appleton Sunday, bringing all the incendiary rhetoric to a head.
Despite Republican assurances that the "war on women's health" is liberal hyperbole, the political chatter about ending Planned Parenthood has stirred up dangerous elements in our deeply divided state.
The Fox Valley, where the clinic bomb exploded, is home to Sen. Joe McCarthy's grave and the headquarters of the John Birch Society, as well as a lively liberal community that twice elected Democrat Steve Kagan to Congress.
It's also where a number of clinics lost funding due to Scott Walker's $1.9 million in cuts for family planning programs.
Anti-abortion GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum immediately condemned the clinic bombing, reiterating his opposition to Planned Parenthood, but saying, "Violence against our fellow citizens has no place in a freedom-loving America."
Wisconsin Right to Life director Barbara Lyons also weighed in, criticizing the bombing and saying: "We are especially pleased that no one was injured in the incident. Wisconsin Right to Life remains committed, as it has throughout its 44-year history, to using compassionate and nonviolent means to end the tragedy of abortion."
Gov. Walker's response to this act of domestic terrorism in our state, in contrast, was a deafening silence.
That Walker has not spoken up is shameful, not only because he is the governor of the state, but because his long-term connections to the pro-life base in Wisconsin would make a plea for nonviolence persuasive to the very people who might commit these acts.
During the 2010 election, Planned Parenthood-Wisconsin, NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin and other pro-choice groups struggled to get the word out about Walker's extreme anti-abortion and anti-birth-control views, but their message was overshadowed in an election focused on the economy, the state budget deficit and the backlash against President Barack Obama.
Walker won an endorsement not just from Wisconsin Right to Life, but from the smaller and more hard-core Pro-Life Wisconsin, which had not endorsed a candidate for governor for years.
Pro-Life Wisconsin gave Walker the thumbs-up after he scored 100% on its questionnaire, which asked whether he would support a "personhood amendment" declaring that every embryo is a full human being with inalienable rights from the moment of conception; a pharmacist conscience clause (a bill Walker himself authored when he was a state legislator); and a pledge not to allow contraceptives to be dispensed to minors.
Since taking office, Walker has backed a raft of anti-choice legislation and once set up a state website to direct women to an anti-abortion Christian counseling center. He is also expected to soon sign a bill that does away with accurate, age-appropriate sex education.
Under the circumstances, Walker's silence on the Planned Parenthood bombing is unacceptable.
He's in good company, though. Mitt Romney has not commented on the clinic bombing, either. Just before it happened, the GOP presidential frontrunner told a group gathered for a town hall meeting in Middleton that women are not concerned about access to birth control and are more worried about the national debt.
The Republicans' tin ear on women's health issues is not just hurting them politically, although it is costing them dearly in the polls as the gender gap widens. What the Appleton bombing shows is that anti-women's-health-care rhetoric is playing with fire. The Republicans are courting votes by encouraging a rightwing fantasy that demonizes women and their health-care providers. It's not a big leap when people like the Appleton clinic bomber treat us as fair game.
Ruth Conniff is the political editor of The Progressive.
