Workers World Jan. 30, 1997:

------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Jan. 30, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
Clinic bombings, welfare cuts
Anti-woman terror
By Dianne Mathiowetz in Atlanta
The morning of Jan. 22, as right-wing demonstrators prepared to march against women's right to control their own bodies, a bomb went off outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Washington.
The Mayflower Hotel is also near where the bomb was planted. The National Abortion Rights Action League was scheduled to hold a noon luncheon there, at which Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were to speak.
Jan. 22 is the 24^th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized abortion. The Washington bomb was the fourth attack on an abortion clinic during the week leading up to the anniversary.
But Washington police quickly labeled the bombing as unrelated to any of this. Its proximity to both the clinic and the hotel, and its timing on the anniversary-all was coincidence, according to the police.
To most people, this might seem laughable. Yet there's nothing funny about either the anti-abortion terrorism-or the broad attack on the rights and living standard of the masses of women that is now under way.
Although the White House officially supports women's rights-and even though the constant attacks against Hillary Clinton in particular are sexist and launched from the right wing-the bottom line is that the Clinton administration is carrying out the harshest assault on women in recent history.
The vast majority of women-workers, the poor, women of color, lesbians, old women-will bear the brunt of all the cutbacks endorsed by the president and his party along with the Newt Gingrich and the Republicans. Last fall, Clinton signed the law abolishing the federal welfare program, and he is pushing hard to force former welfare recipients into workfare-forced labor at near-slave wages.
The president is also working with Congress to gut Social Security by turning the fund over to Wall Street. Most Social Security recipients are women. For many of these elders, it is their only means of subsistence.
Medicaid-which provides health care for the impoverished, mostly women and their children-and Medicare, health insurance for retirees, are also on the chopping block. And don't forget that Clinton signed the "Defense of Marriage" Act, which enshrines federal discrimination against lesbian and gay couples.
All this is the context for the increasing attacks on abortion rights.
It's been slow in coming, but there can be no doubt that a political struggle in which women take the lead in fighting back is on the horizon.
Atlanta bombings
Here in Atlanta, two bombs exploded the morning of Jan. 16 at a suburban office building housing the Atlanta Northside Family Planning Services. The women's health center provides abortions.
The first bomb was placed outside a window of the ground-floor clinic. It wrecked that corner of the building and made the ceiling collapse on the waiting room, counseling area and operating room.
Windows shattered in nearby offices and rattled as far as two-and-a-half miles away. Three clinic workers escaped unharmed; so did dozens of other people in the multi-story building.
An hour later, at 10:30 a.m., a second powerful explosion went off. This one was in the parking lot next to a big iron trash container. It heavily damaged two cars, sheared off the tops of nearby trees, and injured seven people including a television camera operator, a firefighter, and agents of the FBI and Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency.
Investigators say the parked cars absorbed much of the bomb's force. That probably prevented considerable injury and death to those who had evacuated the building as well as the many emergency personnel on the scene.
Police authorities refuse to label the attack an anti-abortion bombing despite the first bomb's location and the timing-days before the anniversary of the historic 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
On the other hand, the extreme right wing had no problem recognizing its handiwork. Michael Bray, who advocates "justifiable homicide" of abortion providers, said he was "relieved" to hear of the bombings. They showed, he said, "a sign of revival" of the anti-abortion forces after "somewhat of a lull."
This same clinic was firebombed in September 1984 at a different location. No one was ever arrested for that crime.
Widespread violence against clinics
The National Abortion Federation monitors attacks on clinics. According to the NAF, there have been 61 arsons or bombings at abortion clinics since 1990.
Two doctors and an escort were murdered in Florida in two separate incidents by right-wing anti-abortionists. And in 1994, John Salvi murdered two women staff members at clinics in Brookline, Mass.
The Atlanta bombs went off while the Feminist Majority was holding a news conference in Washington announcing its survey of clinic violence in 1996. Of 312 clinics around the country, 30 percent reported acts of violence, down from 39 percent in 1995.
In December a doctor at a Baton Rouge, La., abortion clinic was stabbed. A Planned Parenthood office in Dallas was robbed at gun point. A Phoenix clinic was the site of three unsuccessful arson attempts.
On New Year's Day a Tulsa, Okla., clinic was burned. That same clinic was attacked again twice on Jan. 19.
These statistics do not include the daily terror of vile phone calls and mail; death threats against clinic workers and their family members, especially children; dead animals left in mailboxes and on doorsteps; being followed and watched; vandalized cars, and so much more that clinic staff, doctors and pro-choice activists have suffered from anti-abortion organizations-all with little or no police response.
Ann Glazier, the director of Planned Parenthood's clinic defense organization, said the timed double bombing in Atlanta is a sign that anti-abortion zealots have ratcheted up their campaign of domestic terrorism.
"This was meant to injure people," she said. "This was to send a message of fear to the community."
The use of such terror tactics as bombs and arson has a long and bloody history in the South, from the times of night-riding Ku Klux Klansmen who burned Black homes and businesses to the 1958 anti-Semitic bombing of The Temple in Atlanta and the despicable murder of four young girls in a Birmingham, Ala., church during the civil- rights struggle.
Who benefits from terrorism?
The response of the state and federal authorities is to deny any connection between the individuals who carry out such acts of terrorism and the right-wing political organizations that promote and encourage racism, sexism, homophobia and all forms of bigoted violence.
These arsonists, bombers and murderers are always portrayed as "loners" and "wackos." That leaves the system of inequality, exploitation and violence that spawns such social criminals unchallenged.
The purpose of domestic terrorism is to deny sections of the population their rights, to intimidate and confuse people so they take no unified action.
The capitalist state seizes upon acts of terrorism to increase the power of police authority.
Fortunately, the pro-choice movement has proved the saying that "repression breeds resistance." At a local news conference held a few hours after the bombings here, other area clinic directors vowed to continue their work.
The Atlanta All-Peoples Congress has called for Atlantans to "stand up against terrorism" at a demonstration at 1 p.m. on Jan. 25 on Roswell Road near the bombed clinic. The group can be reached at (770) 662-6417.
Mathiowetz helped initiate Buffalo United for Choice in 1992, which mounted an historic mass defense of the city's abortion clinics against "Operation Rescue." Co-author of the pamphlet "The Lessons of Buffalo," she served as the coalition's media spokesperson.
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