Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on Sunday condemned the fatal shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado as an “absolutely abominable” act of domestic terrorism. However, he said, it was “disingenuous” to cast the attack as the result of anti-abortion rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail.

Huckabee’s response was representative of the Republican presidential field: frontrunner Donald Trump said the shooting was “terrible” but focused on the mental state of the alleged gunman. Ben Carson deplored the killings but said, when asked if the attack was a form of domestic terrorism, as a Planned Parenthood official has claimed, “there is no saint in this equation”.

Three people were killed and nine injured in the shooting, which happened in Colorado Springs on Friday. The police officer who died was named as Garrett Swasey, 44. The two civilians who died are due to be named on Monday, after autopsies have been completed. On Sunday Colorado’s governor, John Hickenlooper, said one was a man and one a woman.

A suspect, 57-year-old Robert Lewis Dear, is in custody. Reports on Saturday night said he had used the phrase “no more baby parts” in interviews with officials. That was seemingly a reference to a recent scandal over videos released by an anti-abortion group which purport to show Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of fetal tissue.

The videos have fuelled invective on the campaign trail from Republican presidential candidates and attempts in Congress to defund the organisation. Planned Parenthood has denied wrongdoing by its staff.

“We don’t know fully what the facts are,” Huckabee said, in an appearance on CNN. “Regardless of why [the gunman] did it, what he did is domestic terrorism and what he did is absolutely abominable, especially to those of us in the pro-life movement, because there’s nothing about any of us that would condone or in any way look the other way at something like this.”

He added: “There’s no legitimizing, there’s no rationalizing, it was mass murder. It was absolutely unfathomable and there’s no excuse for killing other people, whether it’s happening inside the Planned Parenthood headquarters, inside their clinics where many millions of babies die, or whether it’s people attacking Planned Parenthood.”

“We ought to value life. Everyone truly does have worth and value.”

In a statement released soon after the shooting, the CEO of Planned Parenthood in the Rocky Mountains said the organization was concerned “that extremists are creating a poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism in this country”.

Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas and staunch social conservative, sharply disagreed with that assessment.

“I don’t know any pro-life leader who has suggested violence toward Planned Parenthood personnel or some act of violence toward their clinics. I’ve heard universal condemnation,” he said.

“I think that’s a little bit disingenuous on the part of Planned Parenthood to blame people who have a strong philosophical disagreement with the dismembering of human babies and with the selling of body parts to say that we would like to retaliate by sending some madman into a clinic to kill people. God knows that’s not what anybody would want.”

The suspected gunman, he added, was a “very unstable person” and the shooting was “a terrible tragedy, especially for that police officer and his family”.

Trump, the Republican frontrunner, also condemned the shooting as “terrible” and the work of a “maniac”, although he too declined to draw a link between the attack and political demonization of Planned Parenthood.

“I think he’s a sick person. And I think he was probably a person ready to go,” Trump said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “We don’t even know the purpose. I mean, he hasn’t come out, to the best of my knowledge, with a statement as to why it happened to be at that location.”

Trump said people were “very unhappy” about the Planned Parenthood videos, although he again emphasized that the suspected shooter was an “extremist” who was mentally disturbed.

“I see a lot of anxiety and I see a lot of dislike for Planned Parenthood. There’s no question about that,” Trump said.



Carson was speaking to ABC from Jordan, where he has been visiting camps for Syrian refugees.

“Any hate crime is a horrible thing no matter from where it comes and should be condemned very strongly,” he said. “I think we should talk about the actual facts. If we can get rid of the rhetoric from either side and actually talk about the facts, I think that’s when we begin to make progress.”

Governor Hickenlooper said the US ought to look into ways to “tone down some of the inflammatory rhetoric” that was potentially pushing mentally ill people over the edge.



“Certainly it is a form of terrorism,” he said of the shooting on CNN, “and maybe in some way it’s a function of the inflammatory rhetoric we see on so many issues.



“Now there are bloggers and talkshows where they really focus on trying to get people to that point of boiling over and just intense anger. Maybe it’s time to also look at how do we tone down some of that rhetoric?”

The governor said he was not suggesting the country reduce its commitment to free speech, and instead seemed to focus on the idea of being more cautious with respect to overheated political rhetoric.



The exact motive behind the Planned Parenthood shooting had not been officially confirmed, but Dear’s mention of “baby parts” triggered reminders of other attacks on the women’s healthcare group that have included shootings and arson.



In the 24 hours after the shooting, most Republican presidential candidates remained silent. Texas senator Ted Cruz was the first to comment, saying on Saturday the incident “was unacceptable, horrific and wrong”.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Democratic presidential candidates reacted to the attack with statements of support for Planned Parenthood. President Obama pushed for stricter gun laws while declaring “enough is enough”.

“We don’t yet know what this particular gunman’s so-called motive was for shooting 12 people, or for terrorizing an entire community, when he opened fire with an assault weapon and took hostages at a Planned Parenthood center in Colorado,” the president said in a statement released on Saturday morning.

“What we do know is that he killed a cop in the line of duty, along with two of the citizens that police officer was trying to protect.

“This is not normal. We can’t let it become normal.”