The clinic is still months from being operational but protesters have already started to return: ‘No one deserves to go through what they have gone through, even though they put themselves in harm’s way ’

The lights are still dark at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood where on 27 November a shooter killed three people inside the clinic and wounded nine.

But the protesters are already trickling back.

They are a standard feature at the spot where a long driveway to the abortion clinic meets the road. And on Saturday, before Planned Parenthood employees had even reentered the building, several protesters returned for the first time since the attack.

“Something tells me to go out there right away,” said Joseph Martone, a regular anti-abortion picketer. He was holding a new sign: “Our prayers and condolences to all affected by the recent shooting at Planned Parenthood.” Referring to the shooter, he said: “What he did was more than a few steps beyond what I would do.” Referring to the patients in the clinic that day: “No one deserves to go through what they have gone through, even though they put themselves in harm’s way.”

The reappearance of the protesters and their uneasy coexistence with Planned Parenthood are a part of the Colorado Springs clinic’s slow return to normalcy.

The clinic itself is months away from being operational. Vicki Cowart, CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, says the organization faces long discussions about how to secure the building in the future without making patients and staff feel as though they’re inside “an armed encampment”. On Wednesday, Cowart ventured into the clinic to assess the significant damage. She picked her way around rubble, past a boarded-up hole that a police tactical vehicle had plowed through one side of the building.

“We are taking very seriously what we can learn from this and do differently,” she said.

But protesters are already prepared to take up old routines. The day they returned, Father Bill Carmody was poised to lead a routine prayer service – attendance regularly reaches 70 – before a group of Planned Parenthood supporters interrupted.

On a normal day at the clinic, all this would be background noise. Protesters are relegated to the public property along the street, allowing women to drive to the clinic parking lot without making direct contact. It was one of Cowart’s favorite features of the clinic before the attack. At headquarters in Denver, protesters stand on ladders and shout toward the building with bullhorns.

In Colorado Springs, by contrast, “if you know to listen to them, if you know to look for them, you can hear and see them”, Cowart said. “But I can’t quite tell what they’re shouting. Maybe some version of murderer, baby killer, horrible person.”

The shooting, however, has made it harder for many abortion providers to put picketers in the back of their minds. In the aftermath of the attack, Planned Parenthood and political allies linked the violence to the fiery rhetoric of many abortion foes.

“I won’t be at all surprised to find out that someone who is unstable can easily be motivated or manipulated by extreme rhetoric,” said Dawn Laguens, the executive vice-president of Planned Parenthood.

The National Abortion Federation, an advocacy group for abortion providers, collects incidents of picketing, hate mail and trespassing in the same database that it logs kidnappings of abortion providers, assaults and murders. And picketers have been connected to attempts to gather and publicize personal information about providers. After the shooting, many former abortion clinic workers who spoke about their experiences easily drew an unbroken line from the picketers to the hate mailers to the stalkers to those who are violent.

They are not alone in making these connections. Martone, the protester, has several trespassing arrests for following women onto Planned Parenthood property. As the siege of the clinic unfolded on the news, Martone’s phone blew up with messages asking if he was safe from the shooting – or if he was involved.

Martone was unsurprised.

“I understand everybody’s viewpoints and the possibility that I did something,” he said. “I am probably one of the most aggressive pro-­lifers out there ... I have had a lot of confrontations with people. I’ve been assaulted. I’ve gotten a little nasty, maybe, with a couple people.”

Father Carmody does not share Martone’s instinct for confrontation and seems to recoil at the very notion. He keeps his prayer group separate from protesters who display graphic images and yell at passersby. “We’re prayer warriors, we’re not protesters,” Carmody said recently. “We’re not there to condemn anybody ... How are you going to change a person’s mind after you call them a murderer?”

At a Planned Parenthood vigil for the shooting victims, Cowart said, Carmody approached her to say he was sorry for the lives lost.

That was his second reaction to the shooting.



“My first reaction was: darn it, they’re going to blame me for this,” he said. “And I had nothing to do with it.”

