Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

14 March 2014

Will violence permanently shut down All Families Healthcare?

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Will violence succeed in permanently closing All Families Healthcare, the only clinic in northwest Montana that performs abortions, and does much more? That’s now a grim possibility. Angry and deeply demoralized, AFH’s owner, Susan Cahill, told the InterLake yesterday:

…that she is taking the summer off after the attack, which left her in shock and no longer trusting the community.

Perhaps a summer of fresh air, sunshine, and respite from the stresses of her 38-year career in medicine, will restore her faith in humanity and revitalize her legendary determination not to run out of her clinic by crackpots and religious extremists. I hope so. Should Cahill chose not to reopen AFH, and I will not fault her if that’s the choice she makes, for humans can take only so much, violence will once again have prevailed over reason.

In a letter to the InterLake, Cahill concludes:

An attack against me is an attack against women, and families, and human rights. Everyone in this valley should be outraged.

She’s right. Abortion is legal in the United States of America. Those who want to make it illegal have every right to take their case to legislatures, Congress, the courts, and the people. But they have no right to burn and vandalize clinics or to murder medical professionals. Civilization is diminished when political differences are prosecuted with torch, bludgeon, and sidearm.

Yet that is how the worst of the anti-choice movement’s self-appointed avenging angels operate. Whether the person who robbed and vandalized Cahill’s clinic was motivated by political hate, personal animosity, or religious fanaticism, the viciousness of the crime left people feeling they had been terrorized, that they had not been protected by their community, that it may no longer be safe to walk the streets unarmed or live and work in places not fortified like forward bases in Afghanistan.

What happened at AFH was a crime against Cahill, a crime against our community, and a crime against civilization. How will Kalispell and the Flathead respond?