Colorado is still reeling from the shooting attack that killed three and injured nine at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs on the Friday after Thanksgiving. The tragedy has stunned the community and fanned long-smoldering political embers into a firestorm that shows every sign of roaring through next year’s legislative session and through the November election.

Responses to the shooting – mixing two of the most combustible topics in state politics, guns and abortion – have lurched this way and that in the week since the rampage.

On Tuesday, members of the Joint Budget Committee held a hearing that opened with a moment of silence to honor the dead and wounded in the shooting, along with a call for community healing. Soon afterward, however, Republican lawmakers pressed Larry Wolk, the executive director and chief medical officer of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, over whether the state was being fully responsive to calls by GOP legislators for an investigation into Planned Parenthood for allegedly selling fetal tissue for profit.

The allegation is at the heart of a controversy that has embroiled Planned Parenthood since the summer, when an anti-abortion group released undercover videos of staged meetings where participants discussed buying fetal tissue for medical research. Fact checkers and abortion-rights advocates have dismissed the videos as misleadingly edited to suggest Planned Parenthood was illegally profiting from tissue sales. State investigations around the country have come to the same conclusion. Wolk told the JBC his staff had reviewed all of the unedited video and found nothing to warrant further inquiry.

Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains has said it has only ever sold tissue from the placenta – an organ in the uterus that is not part of a fetus – and that it has only ever sold that at cost.

Yet there remains grave suspicion among conservative lawmakers and their constituents. News outlets reported that Robert L. Dear, 57, the alleged Colorado Springs shooter, said something about “no more baby parts” while being taken into custody, suggesting he also believed the allegations against Planned Parenthood were true.

‘Stunningly crude’

As the rampage unfolded and in the days that followed, a heated back-and-forth over guns and abortion played out on social media, reaching a crescendo this week after state Rep. JoAnn Windholz, R-Commerce City, took to Facebook to blame Planned Parenthood for the attack.

“Violence is never the answer but we must start pointing out who is the real culprit,” Windholz wrote. “The true instigator of this violence and all violence at any (Planned Parenthood) facility, is (Planned Parenthood) themselves. Violence begets violence. So (Planned Parenthood), YOU STOP THE VIOLENCE INSIDE YOUR WALLS.”

On Tuesday morning, the Douglas County Republican Party tweeted a link to an article on the conservative website The Blaze, along with that article’s headline: “Abortionists and Planned Parenthood Shooter Are Just Two Sides Of The Same Coin.”

State GOP Chairman Steve House distanced the party from Windholz’s remarks.

Noting that he had “condemn[ed] the violence” the previous Friday, House issued another statement on Tuesday: “Certain comments from elected officials and candidates since the release of that statement do not reflect the views of the Colorado Republican Party. We have and will continue to condemn acts of violence, regardless of the motivations behind them. Violence, under any circumstance, is never acceptable.”

But some damage had already been done. Windholz’s comments, first reported by The Colorado Independent, were picked up by outlets around the country. In an editorial, The Denver Post called them “stunningly crude, callous and incendiary” and reminded voters that she represented a swing district and is up for election in 2016. On Wednesday, The Aurora Sentinel called on Windholz to resign her seat and urged GOP leadership to censure the lawmaker. The newspaper also reported late Wednesday that a recall campaign targeting Windholz had sprung up.

Windholz didn’t return phone calls from The Colorado Statesman seeking comment.

Dafna Michaelson Jenet, a Democrat running to replace Windholz, said she was “appalled” by the Republican’s statement. “She is blaming this heinous crime on Planned Parenthood itself and the healthcare providers there. Our communities need and deserve healthcare without threats or fear for their safety.”

“Regardless of how people may feel on the issue of abortion or any political issue, for that matter, Americans roundly reject the notion that those who do not hold our beliefs deserve to be killed,” wrote John Myers, the other declared Democratic candidate for Windholz’s seat.

Grilling health officials, facing down ‘gun grabbers’

At the same time the budget committee convened on Tuesday, NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado, an abortion-rights advocacy group, and the liberal advocacy organization ProgressNow Colorado held a press conference at the Capitol to call on elected officials to deliver “less heated rhetoric.”

“We are here to demand less fear-mongering, especially from those in positions of power,” said ProgressNow Colorado Executive Director Amy Runyon-Harms. “We are here to demand better.”

“Let’s be clear, when you use fighting words, and you break laws to prove your point, your words and actions appear to condone violence and hate,” said former state Rep. Karen Middleton, D-Aurora, who heads NARAL Pro Choice Colorado. Taking aim at the organization that produced the undercover videos, she continued, “The so-called ‘Center for Medical Progress’ led a three-year campaign, using false information and deceptive editing to gain access and justify their views. The elected leaders holding hearings attacking the largest provider of women’s health care don’t get to say ‘I did not mean it’ when a deranged individual takes action in response to those words.”

State Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, who has recently led the charge against Planned Parenthood at the Capitol as chairman of the Republican Study Committee of Colorado, called the press conference a “grandstanding” effort to impede legitimate inquiry. On Tuesday at the budget briefing he seemed as committed as ever to running bills and holding hearings on Planned Parenthood in the upcoming session.

“Concerning fetal tissue trafficking and the (state health) department’s oversight of that,” he said at the budget hearing, “the issue has now come up in a very big way. What is the department going to be doing regarding this?” he asked Wolk. “Will you commit to meeting with those of us who are concerned about this and discuss this more fully to explain?”

“I’m happy to be transparent and to meet with you and anyone else who’s interested, in the appropriate setting and at the appropriate time,” Wolk replied.

Dudley Brown, head of the influential “no compromise” gun-rights group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, sent out a fundraising email on Tuesday claiming that this year was “make or break” for Coloradans looking to beat back gun-control legislation.

“Anti-gunners are continuing to exploit the acts of murderous madmen,” Brown wrote. “Two days after a madman killed three people at a shopping center in Colorado Springs, anti-gun rhetoric was already in full swing. And this time it came from none other than anti-gun Governor John Hickenlooper, claiming that the legislation the gun grabbers rammed through in 2013 didn’t go far enough.

“The anti-gunners at the Capitol are reenergized.”

Indeed, sources around the Capitol this week say they expect election-year battles over abortion and gun rights to dominate the work of the Legislature.

In December 2012, the shooting attack on an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, killed 26 students and teachers, following the attack earlier that year at an Aurora theater that killed 12 and injured 70 people. The Democratic-led Legislature responded in the spring by passing gun-control laws that upended state politics, drawing angry protests for weeks and spawning recall elections that ousted two Democratic senators.

Next year’s session will take place in the shadow of the Planned Parenthood shooting. Add to that the fact that early in the session, reportedly sometime in February, a state court is scheduled to hear arguments in a grizzly Longmont case that drew national headlines and ignited fierce partisan legislative battles around abortion and fetal-homicide laws earlier this year.

Cathy Alderman, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said she expects a full legislative assault.

“Given the current hostile environment,” she said, “Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains is prepared to fight multiple bills that will hurt women’s access to health care.”

– john.tomasic@gmail.com