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Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic reopens after deadly shooting

Vicki Cowart, president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains addresses the media outside a chain link fence around ongoing reconstruction of the entrance of the building today in Colorado Springs, Colo. The Colorado Springs’ Planned Parenthood clinic reopened Monday, nearly three months after a gunman killed three people and injured nine others. We are opening today with our eyes to the future, said Cowart. (Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette via AP)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. » With exterior walls still carrying the bullet scars of a Nov. 27 shooting that killed three, the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic reopened for business today.

Leaders say the clinic has a full list of appointments this week for services including abortions, which the alleged gunman, Robert Lewis Dear, has said motivated his rampage.

“We are opening today with our eyes to the future,” said Vicki Cowart, president of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains.

The bullet scars and the missing front doors where an armored police rig crashed into the clinic to end the rampage serve as reminders of the recent past.

“They’ll be gone eventually,” Cowart said.

“It looks lovely inside, you’ll have to take my word for it,” she said. Reporters were not allowed inside.

The clinic is looking for ways to remember those who died — Ke’Arre Stewart, 29; Jennifer Markovsky, 35; and Garrett Swasey, 44, a University of Colorado at Colorado Springs police officer — and honor the nine people who were wounded.

“That work is underway,” Cowart said.

Planned Parenthood is also reviewing how to keep the clinic and patients safe.

“We can’t not be aware of the danger, and of the challenge of what happened in this place,” Cowart said.

Workers at the clinic weren’t talking Monday, citing a gag order that bars police, prosecutors and others from discussing the shooting until after Dear’s trial. Dear’s case is in limbo while he undergoes a court-ordered mental health evaluation. His lawyers have filed a motion to bar disclosure of records on his jail stay.

The shooting shocked the city. Scores of police were called to the scene after the first gunshots in a standoff that lasted hours.

Periodic gunfire continued as hundreds of people huddled inside businesses around the shooting scene. Planned Parenthood staff, patients and other visitors were locked inside the clinic until Dear surrendered just before 5 p.m.

In a court appearance, Dear said he targeted the clinic.

“I’m a warrior for the babies,” he shouted in a courtroom outburst in December.

Cowart says she’s bracing herself for how the 15-member staff of the clinic will handle its return to work.

“They were strong and they were brave on the day of the shooting, they have been resilient and hardworking since,” she said.

Chalk inscriptions on the sidewalk near the clinic offered encouragement to those coming back. On a tree outside hangs a yellow ornament with the word “hope.”

Cowart said the workers are tough, but the shooting took a toll.

“I don’t want to underplay that this has been hard on our people,” she said.

Those workers didn’t get a free pass on their first day back. Abortion protesters gathered near the clinic Monday for the reopening.

“The no-good place opened today,” said 54-year-old Joseph Martone.

He stood with placards decrying abortion and was joined on the corner by a Catholic priest, the Rev. Bill Carmody, a longtime Colorado Springs abortion opponent.

But protesters Monday were careful with their words. The tone was conciliatory.

Martone said he doesn’t want the community to associate his cause with Dear’s violence.

“No one deserves to go through what they went through,” he said of the patients and workers at the clinic. “We respect life. All life.”

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©2016 The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)

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