CALIFORNIA (Dispatches) – After an explosion that shook a California fertility clinic on Saturday killing one person, the Federal Bureau of Investigation officials (FBI) classified the incident a deliberate act of terror.
According to reporters at the scene, the blast tore through downtown Palm Springs, ripping a hole in the clinic and blowing out the windows and doors of nearby buildings.
One person near the clinic at the time of the blast had been killed and four others were wounded, and work was ongoing to identify the deceased, Akil Davis, the head of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office told reporters near the site of the fatal explosion.
“Make no mistake, this is an intentional act of terrorism,” Davis said.
“This is probably one of the largest bombing investigations that we’ve had in southern California,” he added.
Asked whether the clinic was deliberately targeted, Davis answered: “We believe so, yes.”
The city’s mayor, Ron deHarte had earlier told media that investigators confirmed a bomb exploded in or near a vehicle outside the clinic.
Aerial footage of the scene shows the building roof had collapsed, and the charred remnants of a vehicle lay in a parking lot, some distance from the apparent epicenter of the explosion.
Local media, citing an unnamed law enforcement source, said the person who died was a suspect in the blast.
A statement posted on social media by the clinic said no staff had been hurt, and that its lab -- “including all eggs, embryos, and reproductive materials -- remains fully secure and undamaged.”
Reproductive care, encompassing abortion and fertility treatments, continues to be a contentious topic in the United States due to religious objections from some conservative groups seeking to outlaw these services.
While infrequent, violent incidents targeting clinics that offer these procedures have occurred in the past.
The issue of abortion and reproductive rights has always been a matter of great importance to the American public.
Roe v. Wade, also known as Supreme Court case 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution protected the right to have an abortion prior to the point of fetal viability.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Roe was among the most controversial in U.S. history and radically reconfigured the voting coalitions of the Democratic and Republican parties in the following decades.
Protests and even violence towards medical staff and clinics that provide reproductive services have taken place in different parts of the U.S.