Posted on 10/16/2001 7:50:26 AM PDT by Alas
Abortion Rights Group Gets Suspicious Letters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading U.S. abortion rights group said on Monday that 90 of its clinics and offices in at least 13 states had received envelopes containing threatening letters and an unidentified powdery substance.
Planned Parenthood (news - web sites) Federation of America said some of the letters included messages from a group called the Army of God, a militant anti-abortion group that has advocated violence against medical personnel who perform abortions.
A spokesman for Planned Parenthood, who asked not to be quoted by name, said the letters were delivered to the organization's national offices and numerous local offices and medical facilities those offices operate. Abortions are performed at many of those facilities, as well as various health services for women.
The group said there have been no reported injuries and that law enforcement officials, including FBI (news - web sites) investigators, were conducting tests on the powdery substance to determine whether it was anthrax bacterium spores.
The news comes amid a nationwide scare involving the potentially deadly bacteria that could be used as a biological warfare agent. The spokesman for the group said initial field test on the substance in letters received at two locations had come back as negative for anthrax. One of the letters had been sent to offices in Greensboro, North Carolina. The spokesman said he did not know the location that received the second letter that tested negative.
Planned Parenthood said the envelopes were mailed to Planned Parenthood offices bearing postmarks from four cities: Atlanta; Columbus, Ohio; and Chattanooga and Knoxville, Tennessee. The spokesman said he believed all the letters were received on Monday. The offices and clinics receiving the letters are located in the East Coast and Midwest, the group said. ``All of them are in the hands of various authorities around the country. As far as we can tell, they all came today in regular mail,'' the spokesman said.
Planned Parenthood said the letters had pre-printed return addresses from the U.S. Marshall's Office and the Secret Service. Some had a message stating, ``Time Sensitive -- Urgent Security Notice -- Open Immediately.'' The spokesman said he could not provide a copy of any of the letters.
``With this many incidents and with the similarity of all of the letters, this is clearly a coordinated effort that was designed to terrorize our staff and affiliates. And people have the right to know about it,'' the spokesman said. In a statement, Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt said: ``It is perverse that these individuals here at home, who are themselves terrorists by virtue of their actions, would seek to capitalize on the events of the last days and weeks to further their own extremist agenda. But this will not deter us from our mission of providing essential health services to women in this nation.''
``Whether a hoax or not, these are intolerable acts of terror, and every effort must be made to apprehend the perpetrators,'' Feldt added. Eric Robert Rudolph, the man charged with carrying out the fatal bombings at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Olympics and at a Birmingham, Alabama in 1998, among other bombings, has been linked to the Army of God. A spokeswoman for the FBI national office had no comment on the investigation and referred calls to the agency's field office that handles Washington. Calls to that office were not returned.
Do you know, for sure, that mailing came from the "Army of God"? Or couldd it, perhaps, have come from al-Qaeda instead?
We only know what the news reports tell us. According to them the letters to Planned Parenthood specifically say from "The Army of God."
Considering groups like this do this pretty regularly -- sorry but they are suspect NUMBER 1.
From a Wall Street Journal article:
snip:
"Letters threatening anthrax were first used against abortion providers in October 1998, just days after a physician who performed abortions, Barnett Slepian, was murdered outside Buffalo, N.Y.
Since then, the NAF says, clinics have received more than 80 anthrax poisoning threats, including letters saying anyone exposed to the powder would die. Some of the earliest letters contained no return address; many were sent from Ohio. But after law-enforcement agents advised clinic staff to avoid opening letters from anonymous senders, letters began arriving with phony return addresses from fictitious medical-supply companies, from the department of taxation or even other clinics, the NAF said. None of the anthrax threats proved real, however, and none of the perpetrators were ever caught.
Since 1992, more than 100 attacks involving butyric acid -- used in the manufacturing of perfumes, artificial flavorings, pharmaceuticals, disinfectants and gasoline -- have been reported at abortion clinics. In 1998, in what appeared to be linked assaults, 19 clinics in Florida, Texas and Louisiana were doused with butyric acid, which can irritate the respiratory tract if inhaled, induce vomiting if swallowed, and can cause burns to the skin and eyes.
In most cases, no serious injuries were reported. However several victims were hospitalized and two clinic workers suffered from more long-term problems, like abnormal liver functions, pneumonia and respiratory problems, according to the NAF."
Pro-lifers.
Killing.
For God.
The American version of it.
You're not up for that debate because you probably oppose the death penalty for murderers and support it for unborn children, is that about right? If you do support the death penalty, then you too are consistent. Consistently pro-death.
Here to stick up for your buddies, eh?
Wonder if Carrion keys in on "Army of God"?
Even the Catholic Church knows that.
Well, doens't seem as though they either closed any of their mills or canceled any appointments, so if it was real, they are even stupider than they would have to be to lie to the fbi.
Tom, Tom, Tom, If this were true, then where is the article about ninty or a hundred post Offices being shut down and how about the story about 90 to 110 mailmen being tested for antrhax?
Tom, if you want to defend the baby murdering scum at PP, go ahaead and do it, but don't pull a clinton on us.
Nukem
I've got to admit I hadn't thought of that. However, despite the headlines, there's actually a dearth of information. I've only seen one local report which was specific, and even that I'll have to check again to be sure.
I'd like to see some indepth reporting on how clinics handled the threat and whether patients have been and are being informed of potential contamination. Field testing must not be too accurate as Judith Phillips and 30 of her coworkers at the NYT are still on antibiotics awaiting final test results despite an inital negative test.
That said, I pray it is only a hoax, as it appears to be. I just want to see PP play by the same rules as everybody else.
The "Army Of God" is not pro-life, and the pro-life movement will not be defined by a group which violates it's beliefs. Tell me, would you like the pro-choice movement to be defined by people like Peter Singer, professor of nonsense at Princeton University, who supports the "choice" of infanticide up to a couples of months after birth?
You see that part of your statment that I have bolded? Well, you should get on your knees this very instant and thank Jesus for two things.
One, that I am His and
two, that I am not close enough to you to forget it even for a moment.
You are one very lucky ...
Nukem
Prolife cradle to grave (although I will admit to second thoughts when it comes to pedophiles).
There are many here who do just that.
When the Pope came to St. Louis, he became one of my heroes.
My sentiments exactly.
The real terrorist are the ones they call doctor and nurse and I call butchers.
Yes, but thankfully for their movement, most pro-choicers are shrewd enough to end the choice at the magical moment of birth, the point at which they are convinced, due in large part to their 300-year-old biology reference set, that life really begins.
In the absence of information, the direct approach is the same as jumping to conclusions. Since the extreme left does have a history of commitng hoaxes to garner sympathy and support, you have to figure that into your thinking. If your going by what you think is most likely, then you should count up the number of cases of abortion violence over a period, and compare them to the number of hoax cases, you'll probably find there were more hoaxes than violence. So the direct approach would would be to label this a hoax instead of a case of abortion violence. I think either would be jumping to a conclusion.
We can also probably rule out PP itself,
You can probably count out the senior officers of the organization, but not the staff. Advocacy groups (of any any type) tend to attract people who are zelots for that cause. Who would have easier access to a list of Planned Parenthood clinics than someone associatied with the organization? As far as I know, the powder hasn't been confirmed as anthrax. If it turns out to be just a harmless powder, that would seem to strenghten the possibility it was someone trying to garner attention and sympathy for Planned Parenthood.
Yes. Someone does. They go by the name of:
-Army of God
- Creator’s Rights party
-Christian Gallery
-American Coalition of Life Activists
- Advocates for -Life Ministries
-The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord.
-Operation Save America
The list goes on...
MHG: Friends of yours?
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