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Last night at about 8 p.m., the Associated Press’s Roxama Hegeman became an early purveyor of the myth that abortion clinic-related violence has been a frequent and consistent occurrence during the past two decades when she wrote the following about the murder of Kansas abortionist George Tiller (saved here at host for future reference; bold is mine):

There was no immediate word of the motive (of) Tiller’s assailant. But the doctor’s violent death was the latest in a string of shootings and bombings over two decades directed against abortion clinics, doctors and staff.

A look at the actual history of such violence accumulated by a pro-abortion group demonstrates that Tiller’s murder is correctly seen as a horrible, isolated incident following a long, sustained, and not-reversed period of decline.

Here is the “History of Violence” accumulated by the National Abortion Federation (NAF), broken down into five categories:

• Murder and shootings — There were none since 1998 until Tiller was murdered on Sunday. From 1993-1998, seven abortion doctors or abortion clinic employees were killed, and 12 others were injured, many very seriously. One cowardly killing after 11 murder-free and shooting-free years following a period of seven in six years does not signal a trend by any reasonable definition.


• Arsons and bombings — Starting in 1976, NAF lists 13 such crimes during the remainder of that decade, over 75 during the 1980s, over 100 during the 1990s, and 16 since the turn of the century. Only six arsons took place from 2004-2008. The last arson listed at NAF’s site occurred in December 2007. It should also be noted that arsons set by business owners in general to collect insurance money are not all that infrequent.


• Butyric acid attacks — Butyric acid is a clear, colorless liquid with an unpleasant, rancid, vomit-like odor. According to NAF, this clinic attack method was used “about 100″ times from 1991-1998, and has not been employed since.


• NAF lists over 650 antrax attacks and fake anthrax attacks from 1998-2002, and none since then. Over 550 of these occurred in 2001.

Overall, an “Extreme Violence” page at NAF listing activity from 1997-2007 lists the following number of incidents per year:

As you can see, Rebecca Hegeman’s “string” has been broken twice in the past three years.

Abortion clinic violence and violence against abortionists has generally been on such a steep decline during the past decade that MSNBC stopped updating a web page dedicated to the topic in the late 1990s.

Without recounting already-known details, the unique specifics of Tiller’s situation also supports the idea that his murder, which should of course be and I’m sure will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, will more than likely not be a part of a new “string” of similar ones throughout the country.

Not that the establishment media types like the AP’s Hegemen, the ever-opportunistic Obama administration, or far-left blogs will particularly care about these facts.

There’s one more thing Ms. Hegemen forgot to note: The pre-born babies that George Tiller murdered were not available for comment.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

Steve Herzfeld managed an admirably inventive end-run around high healthcare costs for his Parkinson's- and Alzheimer's-afflicted parents. After in-home care was no longer possible, he priced American nursing homes, but found that the cheapest acceptable option was still $6,000. So he sent them to India. Quality elderly care in Puducherry cost less than his father's fixed income. According to the Guardian:

[In India, Herzfeld] could give his parents a much higher standard of care than would have been possible in the US for his father's income of $2,000 (£1,200) a month. In India that paid for their rent, a team of carers—a cook, a valet for his father, nurses to be with his mother 12 hours a day, six days a week, a physiotherapist and a masseuse—and drugs (costing a fifth of US prices), and also allowed them to put some money away...."In India, they really like older people," says Herzfeld, describing how the staff seemed to regard his parents as their own family.

Of course, the care was inexpensive because a couple thousand bucks goes further in Puducherry than it might in, say, Fort Lauderdale. Herzfeld, though, apparently believes that it was cheap because elderly care in America is greedily overpriced by providers. He vents about about healthcare and the profit motive: 

[Herzfeld] believes that India could teach the US and UK a lot about care of the elderly. "In America, healthcare is done for profit, so that skews the whole thing and makes it very inhuman in its values," he says.

I try not to begrudge a man his fantasies, but the idea that the nurses, valets, and masseuses of Puducherry were doing it all out of the goodness of their hearts—rather than the goodness of their paychecks—is condescending. It was simple outsourcing, not subcontinental altruism, that saved Steve Herzfeld so much money.

In Reason's May 2009 print edition, Ronald Bailey wrote about the outsourcing of hip replacement.

A presidential proclamation marking Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.

Available in full after the jump.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation released its preliminary analysis of crime trends in the U.S. for 2008 and there's plenty of good news:

... the nation experienced a 2.5 percent decrease in the number of violent crimes and a 1.6 percent decline in the number of property crimes for 2008 compared with data from 2007. The report is based on information that the FBI gathered from 12,750 law enforcement agencies that submitted six to 12 comparable months of data to the FBI for both 2007 and 2008.

... In 2008, all four of the violent crime offense categories declined nationwide compared with data from 2007. Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter declined 4.4 percent, aggravated assault was down 3.2 percent, forcible rape decreased 2.2 percent, and robbery decreased 1.1 percent.

See FBI press release detailing crime trends here.