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“A dream you dream alone is only a dream; a dream you dream together is reality.” — Yoko Ono
“In my heart, I think a woman has two choices: either she’s a feminist or a masochist.” –Gloria Steinem
Oct
20
Attempted Abortion Clinic Bomber Gets 40 Years
Filed Under abortion, anti-choice extremism, misogyny, reproductive justice, social conservatives, violence against women and girls, women’s health | Posted by Cara |
Hopefully, you remember the case of the man who planted a bomb outside of an Austin abortion clinic this April. Thankfully, he was yesterday sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Paul Evans, 27, left a nail-packed bomb in the parking lot of the Austin Women’s Health Center on April 25, but it failed to go off.
Prosecutors have not disclosed why he wanted to bomb the clinic, but the Austin American-Statesman said Evans admitted in court on Friday he wanted to harm abortion providers.
“I never meant for anyone, except for the abortionists, to get hurt,” Evans told U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks.
“I obviously have a lot of beliefs and honestly, if I had that day to do over again, I would change everything about it,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Sparks gave Evans the maximum 40-year sentence he faced after pleading guilty to the crime in July in a plea bargain with prosecutors.
Wow. So we don’t know why he wanted to bomb the clinic? Except that he hates “abortionists” and wants to harm them? Yeah, sure seems like a mystery. I guess we’ll never know.
I also really do love the “I would change everything” comment. Does that mean that he would have found a way to make sure that only the “abortionists” were harmed, as he said was his original intent? Or that he would have made sure that the bomb went off? Or that he wasn’t caught?
Forty years is a very long time. I am not personally one who believes in overtly punitive punishment. However, I do think that it’s pretty clear here that Evans does not have an awful lot of remorse. He was also engaging in terrorist activity (more so that most people at Guantanamo . . .), intended to murder dozens of strangers, received a fair and speedy trial and does seem like he holds a high probability of being a violent threat in the future. So yeah, I am in fact pleased that our judicial system is finally taking threats against abortion provider seriously (and I don’t mean that in a “making him an example” sort of way, but a “holding people responsible for their potentially murderous actions” sort of way). And one more dangerous anti-choice nut is off the street. If only proving the violent intent that so many others hold were so easy.
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“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” — Susan B. Anthony
Glad he got the maximum as well. A nail bomb is fucking insanity. By the way if you haven’t read this, thought you might be interested, although you’re not gonna like it.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/10/20/huckabee-likens-abortion-to-holocaust/
I could be wrong, but I swear he says the reason we import so many foreign workers is because of the holocaust that is legalized abortion. Brilliant logic, that really must be it; maybe Huckabee is smarter than I thought. Probably not though.
Oh yeah, he definitely says that. He says it here, and I’ve heard him say it in a debate with my own two ears. He is, in fact, quite nuts. But so are all of the contenders on that side of the fence. Even with Brownback gone, now.
Yeah, it’s one of those things where you almost want to dismiss as insane, except you realize how dangerous it is for someone at these levels of power and prestige to believe this way; I know we’re all aware of it, but it is indeed scary when you think about the size of Huckabee’s constituency.
Yeah. Well by calling it insane, I don’t mean to dismiss it. I mean that it actually is insane. And yes, for someone who has such a large constituency, it is very frightening for him to hold such insane views. Quite honestly, I just don’t know what is left to say at this point about these kind of nuts, other than the fact that they are indeed nuts.