It’s a clinic, so they must preform abortions…right?
This is a case that really makes me wonder how someone could call themselves an “activist” but not be informed enough to get their protesting right:
David McMenemy, 46, was sentenced Friday to 5 years in prison for attempting to burn down a Davenport, Iowa women’s health clinic on September 11, 2006. McMenemy, a Detroit native, crashed his car into a building that he believed to be an abortion clinic and lit a bottle filled with gasoline before surrendering to firefighters. The Edgerton Women’s Health Care Center does not perform or make referrals for abortions, but provides prenatal care and medical services to low-income and underprivileged women, according to clinic officials.
During the sentencing, McMenemy admitted wrongdoing, telling US District Judge John Javery, “It was wrong. Even if it was an abortion clinic, it would still be wrong.” He then added that he planned to distance himself from any anti-abortion organizations in the future.
The judge ordered him to pay $263,252 in damages to the clinic and also to be treated for mental health and substance-abuse.
It’s not like it would have required much more effort to crash into the place and burn it down than it would have to find out what the clinic actually does. He and the guy who burned down the Hummer plant because they are high polluters (and his destruction of the plant actually caused more pollution than the Hummers could have put out in years) should get together and start a “hair-brained activist club”. In it, they will discuss ways ruin the environment and lives by making base-less assumptions and then acting on them through violent explosions.
I am quite saddened about this case. First of all, I don’t think he received a stiff enough penalty. Maybe if we started factoring is stupidity, sentences could be harsher. Additionally, that clinic was probably helping many women. It was probably run by an non-profit organization who does not have the funds to re-build the entire facility and now will have to remain closed (at least for some time) in order to build more funds. In the mean time, countless low-income and underprivileged women will have to seek care elsewhere, possibly further away and possibly not at all. Sometimes when you fight so hard for a cause, you do more harm than good.
women, abortion, clinics, activists, anti-abortion
December 1st, 2007 at 5:29 pm
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