I'll admit that when I saw the headline this morning, I thought that another abortion clinic had been bombed or that a physician who provides them was targeted. It does not happen frequently, but when it does, it makes the front page news.
However, reading through the article I discovered that Dr. Pierce is a family practitioner, just your regular ole' family doc. For the life of me, I could not think of any service that a family practitioner provides that is contentious among radical religious, economic, or political groups. Surely, there is not a group of people out there that are so offended by circumcisions that they would blow up someone's car.
I did a bit of looking around and discovered that family practitioners can prescribe mifepristone, the infamous RU486 abortion pill, in the state of Arkansas. I can not find any information on the type of practice he has, except that he has privilages at Crittenden Regional Hospital in West Memphis, AR. All of the cases of this kind of domestic terrorism involved those who performed the abortion procedure, their staff, or the clinics where they took place. I have never seen someone targeted for offering medication that may cause a spontaneous abortion.
Another scenario is Dr. Pierce's involvement in the medical board, which is involved in physician licensing in the state. He only votes on the board's decisions in the case of a tie. Lawyer's for the board of medicine cannot recall an instance of this being needed in recent years. This seems to make the "disgruntled doctor" seeking revenge an improbable explanation.
Perhaps this was just a random act of violence.
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