Texas Planned Parenthood Clinic Attacked With Molotov Cocktail

A McKinney, Texas, Planned Parenthood clinic that does not provide abortions was attacked with a Molotov cocktail late Tuesday night, causing a small fire at the entrance of the building. The device, consisting of diesel fuel in a glass bottle with a lit rag fuse, did not cause any injuries, but a Planned Parenthood official said it did cause "serious damage" to the facility.

"It didn't penetrate the health center office and none of the staff or patients were there, which is great," Holly Morgan, director of media relations and communications for Planned Parenthood in Dallas, told Star Local News. "It scorched the outside of the door and I believe there was a little scorching to the retail locations on either side of it."

Tait Sye, spokesperson for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America told HuffPost that, while this incident marks the first attack on the McKinney clinic, Planned Parenthood locations around the country have experienced similar attacks over the years because of the organization's association with abortion. A 37-year-old man threw a Molotov cocktail at a clinic in Madera, Cali., in September 2010 that shut the clinic down for two days, and another clinic in Raleigh, N.C., was vandalized earlier this month with the spray-painted message, "you shall not murder."

According to the most recent statistics from the National Abortion Federation, there were a total of 96 incidences of violence -- including murder, death threats, vandalism, arson and bombing -- against U.S. and Canadian abortion clinics in 2010.

Despite the attack on the McKinney clinic, the police cleaned up the damage quickly enough that the Planned Parenthood staff were able to continue providing pap smears, STI screenings and contraceptives to patients the next morning.

"We’re open for business today in McKinney," Planned Parenthood of North Texas tweeted on Wednesday, "b/c our patients depend on us & our resolve to serve the community is strong as ever."

Comments

[Dunkleberger Karl]

10:17 PM on 08/30/2011

Im Sure that They intended on throwing a" Bloody Mary" But alas , No celery!

[quedog]

12:50 PM on 08/24/2011

in a world and a country with several times more people then we can sustain
republicans feel that it is necesary to attack the one organization that can help reduce the population rate.

republicans will do everything they can possibly do to ensure that the fetus arrives and then they could care less how it survives after that. i guess this is part of what happens to ones mind when they pray endlessly to someone that isn't there

[Mark Scott]

06:18 PM on 08/02/2011

More right wing terrorism. Actually that was redundant, wasn't it? I could have just written "more terrorism". Because terrorism is owned lock stock and smoking barrels by the right, usually the religious right, whether they're christian or muslim.

[yummypumpkin]

01:44 PM on 07/31/2011

I don't live far from McKinney and this is disturbing!

Is the so called "sanctity of life" maintained when one firebombs a building and potentially causes death or injury to others? Hypocrites!

[Mark Scott]

06:18 PM on 08/02/2011

The religious right owns hypocrisy, even though they don't know how to spell that word.

[missouriwatcher]

04:49 PM on 07/30/2011

Arsonists are terrorists when they attack unabandoned property. Hope they get caught soon.

[flwrskmbrly88]

08:56 AM on 07/30/2011

50AndreaTexas-Fanned and Faved. My thoughts exactly.

[annedyth]

10:57 PM on 07/29/2011

Whoever did this, hope they get caught, and sentanced for a long prison term.

[Terri Geer]

10:13 PM on 07/29/2011

This is nothing less than terrorism.

[Intelligenti Pauca]

08:48 PM on 07/29/2011

I see a lot of debate going back & forth over whether the person(s) who did this was/were Christian or not. Considering that abortion is such a hot button issue for the majority of Christians, coupled with the preponderance of evidence that many past anti-abortion bombers/attackers/murderers were Christians of one stripe or another, I think the odds are pretty good that it may very well have been religiously motivated & perpetrated by a Christian.

Now, before people start flaming me with posts & calling me names, hang on a minute. I propose a deal. If it turns out that I'm wrong about the religious affiliation of the person or persons who tossed the Molotov cocktail, then I'll come back & post a full apology stating that I was wrong. But if it turns out that I'm right about the religious affiliation of the bomber(s), then anybody who wants to flame me has to come back here and post an apology.

I have my suspicions about this one, but if I'm wrong I'm man enough to come back & admit I was wrong. Anyone else willing to accept my deal?

[kbroadfoot]

01:50 PM on 07/30/2011

The idea that Christians could not perpetrate any mayhem at all is ludicris.. they are as capable as anyone else of reaching extreme points of view leading to violence. They have even been violent in the past from less extreme positions... think the crusades.. you see the real issue is this: They are HUMAN.. Human's can be and are often violent.

[Intelligenti Pauca]

01:50 PM on 07/30/2011

Both sides seem more than willing to jump to conclusions about who may have committed this crime. But instead of making an uninformed, ignorant blanket statement, I based my post on facts & past history. I thought that I might get some flak for what I posted, which is why I included the "deal" about making an apology if I was wrong. Now, almost 18 hours later, not one person has taken me up on it.

Thanks for confirming what I had already suspected. People have no problem shouting at the tops of their lungs that there's no proof that a Christian did this, but when put in a position of "put your money where your mouth is", nobody is willing to take that bet.

This inability to walk the walk speaks much louder than the shrill denials do. It tells me that, while you're willing to come on here & denounce people who automatically assumed that person or persons involved were Christians, deep down in your heart you too believe that the person or persons responsible might actually be Christian, based on past history & facts.

The deal is still open for anyone who's willing to walk the walk & stand up for your belief that this crime wasn't necessarily perpetrated by a Christian.

[sakovkt]

08:31 PM on 07/29/2011

Ever think, that what we may be seeing, is the beginning of a civil war?

We've had two years of non-stop, uber-liberal, major policy changes forced down our throats by parlaimentary gerrymandering, activist judges and Congressmen whose reflection of mass sentiment was pretty well repudiated in 2010.

Figure, John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry was in 1859, and 2 years later, the Civl War started.
2 years from now, Obama runs for re-election, after Norway, Terry Jones, and a litany of failures and name calling, and now, horror of all horrors, we discover that we really are broke and so far in debt that most of us will not live to see America flush, again.

If you remember how disgruntled people were in 2008, and then extrapolate that thru the present level of hyper-pissed off mood to 2012, we could all be shooting at each other.

Maybe, it's time to stop the name calling, figure we're all in a lot of hot water, and that there were some more traditional things that used to work a lot better than then this current experiment in God knows what.

Read the wikipedia article about John Brown, and maybe you'll see what I mean.

[Jessica Kwatick Perera]

11:15 PM on 07/29/2011

Please no, not the 80's. But let's have the Clinton's surplus again. Try to live in the now and learn from the polices that worked in the past. Clinton balanced the budget by taxing the rich and the jobless rates were down too. So what do you think is the need of the hour?

[seegray]

01:08 PM on 07/30/2011

Um, state legislatures who have done the gerrymandering being forced down are throats are by a vast majority conservative ones, not "librul" ones. Second, many of the so-called activist judges (activist only because their opinions differ from yours) were appointed by GOP presidents, not Dem ones. Most of the activist judges (activist because their opinions differ from mine) of whom I am aware were in fact appointed by GOP presidents. Finally, go look up the statistics on who voted last year. Progressive voters stayed home in droves while having hissy fits....by no means did we see anything repudiated except by default, for which the progressive community needs to take full responsibility.

[flyingfortresb17]

06:40 PM on 07/29/2011

This is the extremist of the Texas Republican anti-abortionist program that permeated the Texas house and senate this year. The Republican ideology is to stop anything to do with family planning.

[ChaCubed]

07:23 PM on 07/29/2011

Absolutely correct, Flying. Their goal is to have all sexual intercourse result in pregnancy and all pregancies to result in childbirth. The bizarre reason behind it, is their idea of morality, and their belief that, if girls and women can't get abortions or birth control, they will stop having sex, which they believe is the right thing: no sex without marriage and no sex within marriage unless it is for procreation.

Caveat: some who believe all of the above make an exception for having sex during the times of the month when the female is not supposed to get pregnant. Obviously, for them, contraception is bad because it's man-made, but it's okay to enjoy God's-gift-of-funtime-without-consequences. :-))

[hebrewzzi]

05:10 PM on 07/29/2011

What was it all the Fox News people have been saying? Conservative Christians are incapable of terrorism?

[labuyu]

07:07 PM on 07/29/2011

It is most certainly not beyond the anti-Christian folks to perpetrate such an event themselves to enable them to gain publicity from the eager left wing mainstream media to demonize an entire religion for the acts of a few isolated individuals whom we do not even know are Christians.

Why do the same anti-Christian folks rush to the aid of so-called moderate Muslims when radical Muslim extremists attack a market, Mosque or other public area and intentionally target innocent men, women and children? Estimates say that only approximately 0.5% of Muslims are radical extremists which, considering there are 1.5 billion Muslims world wide, equals 7.5 million radical Muslim extremists. And yet the anti Christian folks and the so called moderate Muslim folk remain curiously silent when radical Muslims attack and murder.

[Intelligenti Pauca]

07:25 PM on 07/29/2011

Have you read your Bible?

If you go through the Bible and count the actual number of people that it says God has killed you come up with 2,476,633 people. If you do the same thing for Satan you come up with 10 people. Now, if you were to include the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc., then God's number would go from approximat­ely 2.5 million to around 25 million.

[robertaruth]

08:47 PM on 07/29/2011

Talk about far-fetched logic - this one is a classic, especially the first paranoid paragraph.

[aceempress]

05:01 PM on 07/29/2011

I'm still trying to understand. Christians who throw bombs at clinics that do not perform abortions are not terrorists, and a Christian Norwegian who killed dozens of unarmed children because he thinks they may grow up to be liberals isn't a terrorist. Timothy McVeigh was not a terrorist. Hmmmm. Terrorists are defined as those who commit violent acts which are intended to create fear. There is a disconnect going on in some people's brains.

[Donald Scott]

05:55 PM on 07/29/2011

And the Christian's name that they caught? There are just as many non-believers out there who are capable of this act, so why immediately attack a christian. It's great being a christian for your information and happy to know am on my way to Heaven?

[Madtgod]

07:40 PM on 07/29/2011

Me too,can't wait to meet Santa Claus.

[pammiethekid]

08:54 PM on 07/29/2011

Glad to know you are on your way to heaven. Sorry you care so little for anyone who doesn't subscribe to your beliefs. But please know, those who carried out the 9/11 attacks on the US were, in their minds, assured a place in their heaven also. They believed this as surely as you believe what you believe, and patted themselves on the back in a manner that is chillingly similar.

[letdowntourist]

05:56 PM on 07/29/2011

It's hard when people do something terrible in the name of something you believe in. Christians unfortunately have an occasional reminder here and there of what the entire population of the Islamic religion deals with on a day to day basis. It's easiest just to deny it away but it doesn't solve any problems.

[Donald Scott]

04:55 PM on 07/29/2011

And from the bottom line of these posts.
(1) A republican did it because ALL democrats are for abortions.
(2) A christian did it because there are NO democrat christians.
(3) Don't talk too much about abortion because those women out there mean business.

Now the above is nonsense except (3), just as well as the post that a christian or republican did it. Otherwise folks, get real! and now burn a church. If you have that idea then maybe you may be the #1 suspect.

[garylinn]

05:02 PM on 07/29/2011

Fanned n faved for a very interesting summation of the thread.

[letdowntourist]

05:51 PM on 07/29/2011

Donald, with all due respect you lumping the readers and commenters into buckets as such is exactly what you claim to be angry about and arrives at it's conclusion using the same flawed logic.

I wonder why it is you feel the need to come here and defend a terrorist act regardless of who is at fault. I assume that you being the grown up here would jump to defend Islam from the acts of people like the fort hood shooter and the underwear bomber, because they obviously don't represent the people of Islam as a whole and have corrupted it's meaning. They are not fit to call themselves Christian just as the person who did this is surely not fit to call themselves Christian.

The religion is not the problem, it is the culture. And I can tell you that McKinney is so extraordinarily conservative that even though not a single abortion has ever been performed in that clinic it did not surprise me to learn something like this happened. Does that make all conservatives bad? No.

Do you really find the conclusion to be so far fetched that you have to post over and over defending an indefensible act? Christians need to be the first to acknowledge and denounce this sort of violence. Not taking any responsibility for fostering these kinds of beliefs only further drives a wedge between those that do not believe and those you wish to evangelize to.

[Donald Scott]

06:25 PM on 07/29/2011

Guess you read me wrong. I do not care for any type of violence or condon it. I said why do you automatically assume it was a republican or a christian who did this act. Are ALL non-believers in favor of abortion? Now catch him or her or they, hang 'em high whether a christian or non-believer. If I was to imput about the foreigners it would not be posted. Hope what I said above does.

[robertaruth]

08:18 PM on 07/29/2011

Not all Christians are religious fanatics, and not all religious fanatics are Christian, although they may think they are.

Though I am not a practicing Catholic (merely having been baptized as one without my consent), I believe that these religious fanatics who bomb clinics and harass and murder abortion doctors in the name of christianity have been responsible for the "bad name" that real every day church going christians have been subjected to.

[Robert Gambee Sr]

03:44 PM on 07/29/2011

O'Reilly: This is Right Wing Christian Terrorists at work again. Why can't it be called what it is?
A whole lot of us Christians know the difference, why don't you?