Terrorism and Abortion

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Terrorism, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is:

"The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons."

(Emphasis mine.) Sorry, Governor, but I think bombing Planned Parenthood buildings and killing their staff and clients definitely falls under that definition.

I would like to take this one step further than Brian Williams did though. What about standing outside of a Planned Parenthood building and yelling at clients as they get out of their cars, creating enough of a scene that PP has to actually hire people to escort clients to the door?

That's terrorism too. Let's cut the definition down:

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

Which leaves us with: "The threatened use of force or violence by an organized group against people with the intention of intimidating or coercing, often for ideological reasons." Yup, that's about right. That's what these people are doing. "But they're not threatening to use force or violence," you might say. Sure they are. Think about it. If PP needs to hire escorts, the perception of a threat of violence is there. Yelling at someone that they're going to burn in hell for all eternity - and these unpeaceful protests are most definitely faith-based - is threatened use of violence, even if the people yelling won't be inflicting the violence themselves. Anti-abortion people are out there yelling at people with exactly the intention of intimidating patrons into not getting an abortion.

Protesters get pretty rough though. Why aren't they protesters? Standing outside PP with signs that say "Stop Abortions Now" and if not leaving patrons alone altogether, then peacefully giving them pamphlets, booklets, flyers, what-have-you, or striking up conversations that possibly begin with a phrase like, "Did you know..." The point of a protest is to say that you, the protester, do not agree with something. A legal protest is a peaceful protest. A terrorist protests using fear on those that don't agree or are different in some way. Fear is inherently unpeaceful.

Is using intimidation (such as, say, threat of arrest) to keep people from going to the poll booths on Election Day terrorism? I tend to think so.