At Planned Parenthood shooting commemoration, hope for a new chapter at Colorado Capitol

Looking to wrestle something positive from the Black Friday shooting attack at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, the organization's top regional executive said she wants to work with conservative lawmakers in Colorado to tame the escalating political rhetoric that has grown around the organization. One of the organization's top critics at the Capitol didn't reject the notion out of hand.

Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains, told The Colorado Statesman that she is dedicated to opening up the conversation at the Capitol in the coming months. "We look forward to meeting with the legislators," she said. "We will keep talking and we will keep listening."

Cowart acknowledged that abortion and reproductive health are emotional topics, but that reproductive health is also an everyday practical matter that concerns everyone at one time or another in their lives. This fact, she argued, should help free the topic from ideological excess.

"One in five women in Colorado has received care at a Planned Parenthood," she said. "Everyone at the Capitol knows someone who has visited a Planned Parenthood. They may not know they know someone, but I bet they do."

Anti-abortion legislators told The Statesman they're open to greater dialogue and, in fact, are counting on it.

State Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt, R-Colorado Springs, lauded the sentiment of Cowart's remarks.

"That's nice," he said slowly. But he was quick to point out that the Legislature's Republican Study Committee invited Planned Parenthood to appear at a hearing on the hot-button issue of fetal tissue sales and research at the beginning of November and that the organization refused to attend.

"The executives responded through their lawyer that they were too busy to come," he said. "Have they changed their position?"

Klingenschmitt, a former Navy chaplain and online preacher who has made headlines for expressing his vehement opposition to abortion, often using the language of the Old Testament, said Planned Parenthood would have to commit to action, not just words, if it hopes for a significant change in political rhetoric.

"Is (Planned Parenthood) just trying to cover over an image problem or to genuinely engage?" he said.

Cowart was speaking on Saturday at a commemoration for the victims of the clinic shooting. The event drew an overflow crowd of more than 400 people to the First Plymouth Congregational Church in South Denver suburb Cherry Hills Village.

In her remarks at the gathering, Cowart spoke about committing herself and her organization to working to change the status quo politics around Planned Parenthood in Colorado.

"Just days after the attack, politicians weighed in with ugly comments," she said.

The comments that made the most press in Colorado came from state Rep. JoAnn Windholz, R-Commerce City, who said it is the violence of abortions that begets more violence.

"We will not accept this [political rhetoric] as normal," said Cowart. "We can engage in the politics of our democratic process, but the hateful rhetoric we've seen creates a poisoned environment.

"We're here today to commit to bringing real change together as we go forward."

Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, commended the bravery exhibited by the clinic staff in the hours of the attack and in the days since.

"It took a lot for you to be here today and I hope that you feel the love in this room," she said. "People across the country and around the globe have been in awe of your courage and commitment to the patients you serve."

She noted that the Cherry Hills gathering was one of 50 events taking place coast-to-coast as part of Planned Parenthood's National Day of Solidarity.

"What happened in Colorado Springs broke our hearts and steeled our spines," she said.

State officials gathered together in small groups before the service; they included representatives from Gov. John Hickenlooper's administration as well as Rep. Crisanta Duran, D-Denver, former Democratic Colorado Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, D-Coal Creek Canyon, and former Colorado Senate Minority Leader Mike Feeley, D-Lakewood.

Local police parked their dark SUVs around the church and officers stood in pairs on the front lawn surveying the crowd. Supporters dressed in pink streamed into the building.

Before the event, Democratic U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette told The Statesman she has watched in dismay at the way the politics around Planned Parenthood have grown hotter and hotter every year over the last decade.

"Here we are," she said, casting her eyes over the crowd settling into seats set up all the way down the church nave. "I counted how many times this fall the members of the [new U.S. House Select Investigative Panel] investigating Planned Parenthood said the words ‘body parts.' It was at least 33 times," she said.

DeGette last week lamented in a Huffington Post article that, when he announced the formation of the panel, former House Speaker John Boehner referenced the "baby parts business" and that the Republican members of the panel repeatedly referenced "baby body parts" or "body parts." The Colorado Springs clinic shooter reportedly used similar language when he surrendered to authorities.

The House panel was looking into allegations that Planned Parenthood was illegally profiting from fetal tissue sales. The panel uncovered no illegal activity on the part of the organization, but the hearing made countless headlines. Anti-abortion state lawmakers took up investigations around the country. In Colorado, the Republican Study Committee hearing went on for nearly eight hours, and the committee members have said they are determined to follow up on the topic in the legislative session that opens in January.

In the days since the shooting, however, the focus of heated debate has centered less on abortion and fetal tissue sales and research and more on the political rhetoric around Planned Parenthood.

In her prepared remarks, DeGette elaborated the point.

"When we have sincere but conflicting opinions, we have to be able to engage in debate," she said. "As someone who has worked on these issues for a long time, I know that discussion can be more meaningful and illuminating and lead to better ends when we avoid vitriol."

On Monday in Colorado Springs, residents organized around Ryan Barry's "Spirituality for Justice" Facebook page, delivered a petition with more than 5,800 signatures asking U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate the shootings at the local Planned Parenthood clinic as an act of domestic terrorism.

Supporters say that officially naming the act as terrorism would place suspect Robert Dear among a "network of actors" involved in an "intentional campaign to scare people," as Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, told reporters last Wednesday on a press call.