Rachel Maddow: Right-Wing Terrorism Must Be Stopped

By Rachel Maddow, MSNBC. Posted June 8, 2009.

On their front page today—there‘s Dr. George Tiller, just murdered, under the caption, “The lives of innocent babies scheduled to be murdered by George Tiller are spared by the action of American hero, Scott Roeder.”

There‘s an anti-abortion terrorist movement in the United States that operates relatively openly.  They advocate and their members commit acts of violence, including murder, against Americans who are not breaking the law, who are engaged in protected legal activity on American soil.

These acts of violence are politically motivated.  They are designed to change American policies and to terrorize Americans.  They have succeed in making providing abortion services to American women so dangerous, so intimidating that there are only a handful of doctors in the entire country who provide late-term abortions—as Dr. Tiller did—abortions late in pregnancy.

In other words, this terrorism is working.  Violence as a political strategy is working to make abortions so unsafe for doctors that they are unwilling to bear the risk of performing it so women can‘t actually get one regardless of whether or not it‘s legal.  It‘s the same outcome as if abortion had been outlawed.  They‘re winning.

What‘s the strategy to stop them?

Joining us now is Jonathan Turley, professor of constitutional law at George Washington University.

Professor Turley, thanks for joining us tonight.

JONATHAN TURLEY, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR:  Hi, Rachel.

MADDOW:  I‘m making these observations politically just as a citizen, but I wanted to ask you tonight if it‘s legally appropriate, legally useful, to approach this problem as terrorism?

TURLEY:  Well, in some cases, it is.  You know, some of these past cases have elements of terrorism.  Rudolph is a good example of that—although, you know, he was not just anti-abortion, he was anti-homosexual.  He was sort of at war with the world.  And that makes this definition a little more difficult.

Some of us, particularly on the civil libertarian side, are uncomfortable with using the terrorism label because, you know, the Bush administration expanded this definition to the breaking point.  I testified not long ago in Congress of how the Bush administration would classify what were rudimentary criminal cases as terrorism cases and use these laws against them.

The problem we have, as you know, is to deal with lone actors like this.  I don‘t believe that the man who killed Dr. Tiller was a classic terrorist.  I think that he was a murderer.  He assassinated him.

But I don‘t see the elements of an organized terrorist plot.  And in many ways, he‘s the most dangerous thing that we face.

I think the Clinton administration got this right when they really saw the danger as the McVeigh type—this lone actor who goes out there, who may be fueled by rhetoric, but who‘s acting alone.  In this case, it looks like he targeted this very doctor who had been demonized by many.

MADDOW:  To the extent that there is a movement that this man saw himself as part of, and I spent a lot of time in very dark corners of the Web today looking at the websites and publications ...

TURLEY:  Yes.

MADDOW:  ... of the organizations that identify themselves as part of this movement.  Famously in the 1990s, there was a statement put out in support of one of the people who was found guilty of killing an abortion provider, saying, “We, the undersigned, believe these actions to be justifiable” and encourage others to do them because—in order to save the unborn.

To the extent that there is something beyond the loner, the lone murderer here, to the extent that there is a rhetorical association, there are organizations that support this sort of thing, does it give law enforcement any additional tools to consider them while they prosecute this crime?  I‘m with you on the civil libertarian concerns about these things -- freedom of association, freedom of the press are to be protected, freedom of speech are to be protected at any cost -- but are there law enforcement tools that would be useful in these cases to acknowledge those ties?

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