Planned Parenthood shooting: news and updates

Robert Lewis Dear, the man accused of killing three people and injuring nine others in a shooting spree at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood last month, said in court Wednesday that he is guilty and that he is a “warrior for the babies” and against Planned Parenthood.

Dear interrupted his lawyer and made repeated outbursts in the courtroom against abortion and Planned Parenthood, according to several local Colorado reporters. He referred to “blood” and “atrocities” at Planned Parenthood, and said the organization “seal[s] the truth and kill[s] the babies.”

In November, a man allegedly walked into a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs and shot at least 12 people, killing three and wounding nine others during a five-hour standoff with police.

The suspect, Robert Lewis Dear Jr., turned himself in to police after the lengthy clash, in which officers and the gunman exchanged fire as people were evacuated and tried to flee. At a hearing in state court Wednesday, he publicly declared his guilt, describing himself as “a warrior for the babies,” he said, “I am guilty. There will be no trial.”

Last Friday night, alleged gunman Robert Lewis Dear killed three and wounded nine at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the deadliest attack on an abortion clinic ever recorded. The next morning, employees and volunteers at Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health clinics across the country went back to work.

“We were just stunned, and angry, and distraught” when the news of the attack hit, said Shana Broders, a regular volunteer with an abortion provider in North Carolina. “There were so many emotions. But all of us were 100 percent sure we would be there tomorrow.”

An ex-wife of Robert Lewis Dear, the suspect in the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting, said Dear once vandalized a Planned Parenthood clinic by putting glue in the locks.

“That was over 20 years ago when he did that,” Barbara Mescher Michaux, who was married to Dear from 1985 to 1993, told NBC News.

Even before the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting last week, most Americans believed that attacks on abortion clinics should be considered domestic terrorism.

The survey found that 67 percent of Americans think those clinic attacks are domestic terrorism. More Democrats (77 percent) called the attacks domestic terrorism than either Republicans (54 percent) or independents (66 percent), but a majority of Republicans still said yes.

A Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs was the site of a horrific attack last November that left two police officers and one civilian dead.

The attack was the deadliest that any abortion clinic has faced in years — but abortion clinics were already accustomed to violence. Since 1977, the National Abortion Federation has logged hundreds of attacks on clinics that terminate pregnancies.

The man suspected of killing three people and injuring nine others at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood location allegedly said, “No more baby parts,” as he was being arrested, leading some observers to say that the attack was a politically motivated act of domestic terrorism.

Two anonymous law enforcement sources told NBC News that the suspect, Robert Lewis Dear, made the “baby parts” comment along with numerous other “rantings” after he was taken into custody. A law enforcement source told the same thing to the Associated Press.

The shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, which left one police officer and two civilians dead, drew major media attention Friday. But there are dozens of other attacks on abortion clinics that don’t get nearly as much publicity, a point pro-choice activist Michelle Kinsey Bruns made on Twitter Sunday. Using the hashtag #is100enough, she tweeted out a list of 100 incidents of violence against abortion clinics, providers, and supporters that have occurred since the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the United States. Some of them are recent:

And some of them are older:

A white male gunman killed three people, including one police officer, and injured nine others Friday at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs. The gunman has been identified as Robert Lewis Dear. It’s still not clear what the shooter’s motive was, but it’s clear that he started his shooting spree at Planned Parenthood and stayed there.

It’s also clear that threats, vandalism, and violence against abortion providers and clinics have escalated since this summer, when anti-abortion activists released deceptively edited videos that accused Planned Parenthood of “selling baby parts.”