Eleven murders.

Twenty-six attempted murders.

Forty-two bombings.

One hundred eighty-two incidents of arson.

One hundred ninety-nine incidents of assault and battery.

Four hundred twenty-nine death threats.

What do these statistics describe? Are they about racial injustice at the hands of law enforcement or in churches?

Nope.

Dangers involving Syrian refugees?

Nope.

Terrorism?

I’ll let you be the judge.

After the Roe versus Wade Supreme Court decision made abortion legal in the United States, the National Abortion Federation began keeping statistics of violent acts against abortion providers in our country. If you are a medical professional or employee who provides a legal service to women who, under the law of our land, choose it, you are in danger when you go to work each and every day.

The statistics above don’t include the thousands of incidents of hate mail and harassing calls. Even I often get hate-type mail simply for writing opinion pieces like this in a newspaper. No wonder more people don’t speak out about this topic.

I have three colleagues, one of whom is a dear friend, who live and work in Colorado Springs.

My friend Lynn is a former employee at the Planned Parenthood where Robert Dear shot and killed three people on Thanksgiving weekend.

Before she worked in Colorado Springs, she worked in Minnesota, where that Planned Parenthood clinic was burned to the ground, rebuilt and then bombed.

“I’m a minority, but not an outsider,” she said in a recent interview. “This is my community, so I’m an insider. I share my life with neighbors who have different views than mine, and we’re deeply supportive of each other. This is my town, our town, and we chose to live here. People from the outside ask, ‘How can you live there?’ But this is our home, our community.”

Bill Taverner, executive director at The Center for Sex Education and editor in chief at the American Journal of Sexuality Education, wrote recently about his experiences training across the country in Planned Parenthood facilities where there had been renovations due to bombings, 24/7 protesters outside facilities and trainees who asked him to please keep the blinds closed in the training room so that he would not be a visible target for outside shooters — all because that’s “just the way things are.”

Sadly, it seems that violence is becoming more and more just the way things are. What’s left for us is to decide if we will be a part of it and fight violence with violence, or if we will be a force of love and community and treat our neighbors with respect and kindness, even if we disagree.

Thankfully, in America, the choice is yours.

Federal Way resident Amy Johnson, MSW, is a trainer, educator and coach in the Pacific Northwest. She is co-author of the books, “Parenting by Strengths: A Parent’s Guide for Challenging Situations” and “Homegrown Faith and Justice.” Amy facilitates classes and workshops in the Puget Sound area and online. She specializes in working with parents and in sexuality education. Amy can be reached at comments@diligentjoy.com.