MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on the death of abortion doctor George Tiller

Last night, Rachel Maddow recapped the history of violence against abortion providers in the United States. This segment is long — it’s nearly 12 minutes — but it’s sobering and frightening and worth seeing. Maddow slowly lays out a case for “an anti-abortion terrorist movement in the United States.”

Here’s a clip of Maddow’s commentary, if you don’t want to watch the video:

There’s an

anti-abortion terrorist movement in the United States that operates

relatively openly. They advocate and their members commit acts of

violence, including murder, against Americans who are not breaking the

law, who are engaged in protected legal activity on American soil. These

acts of violence are politically motivated. They are designed to

change American policies and to terrorize Americans. They have succeed

in making providing abortion services to American women so dangerous,

so intimidating that there are only a handful of doctors in the entire

country who provide late-term abortions—as Dr. Tiller did—abortions

late in pregnancy.

In other words, this terrorism is working. Violence as a political strategy is working to make abortions so unsafe for doctors that they are unwilling to bear the risk of performing it so women can’t actually get one regardless of whether or not it’s legal. It’s the same outcome as if abortion had been outlawed. They’re winning.