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The first question after the slaying of a British soldier on a busy street in London on Wednesday was also the first one after the Boston Marathon bombing, the Atlanta Olympics bombing and many other such incidents: Was it terrorism?

In London, the facts seem to suggest the answer is almost surely yes. There was dramatic violence in a non-military setting with an apparently political purpose. “You people will never be safe,” an attacker, holding a bloody knife and meat cleaver, tells a video camera. “Remove your government. They don’t care about you.”

Laura Beth Nielsen, associate professor of sociology and director of legal studies at Northwestern University, has studied the language of terrorism.

She says the London case seems to be terrorism under virtually any definition but that often the word is used so loosely as to be useless.

Over the years, the word has been used to describe everything from the 9/11 attacks to the Newtown school shootings, from the 1960s civil rights protests to the splattering of officials with fake blood by AIDS activists in the 1980s.

She defines terrorism as violence designed to instill fear in a community to achieve a social or political goal: Unless and until we know an attacker’s motive, we can’t call anything terrorism, or even begin to debate whether it is or not.

That’s why she does not regard the Tucson gunman who killed six people and severely wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords a terrorist. Even though he terrorized many with his actions, he also was a paranoid schizophrenic with no capacity for what she calls “rational calculus” about why he did what he did.

The word “terror” has become politically charged. After the Boston bombing last month, President Obama did not use it in his first statement to the nation. But the next morning, he said that based “on what we now know,” the bombing was “an act of terrorism.”

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer says there was no new information overnight, and that generally the administration “obsessively adopts language that extirpates any possible connection between Islam and terrorism. … It even classified the (2009) Fort Hood (Texas) shooting, in which the killer screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he murdered 13 people, as ‘workplace violence.’ “

Nielsen says she regards the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, as “profoundly mentally ill” and thus incapable of the intent that must be an element of terrorism.

She says she even withheld judgment on calling accused Boston co-bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a terrorist until investigators described a note that established that he — like his brother, Tamerlan — was motivated by a radical Muslim ideology.

As for Obama, she says, many political officials err on the side of describing attacks as terrorism, possibly because it allows them to mobilize more resources.

She says Obama himself seems to have a broad view of terrorism, based on his statement that “anytime bombs are used to target civilians, it is an act of terrorism.”

But without intent, most analysts agree, there’s no terrorism: “You’ve got the guy who blows up his wife with a bomb and tries to blame Muslims,” Nielsen says.

Anyway, she says, immediately after a bombing or other attack, what’s really important is not what you call it — “It’s finding and apprehending who did it.”

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A Philadelphia abortion doctor convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies will not face the death penalty.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell will serve life in prison without parole. He escaped the possibility of execution by agreeing Tuesday to waive his right to appeal his conviction, returned Monday, of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies. A jury found they were delivered alive and killed by snipping their spinal cords with surgical scissors.

During his trial, former employees of Gosnell’s rundown west Philadelphia clinic testified that he performed or tried to perform abortions beyond Pennsylvania’s 24-week gestation limit. Some procedures resulted in the birth of babies who appeared to be moving, breathing and in one case, according to former employee Ashley Baldwin, “screeching.”

In his summation before more than a week of jury deliberation, Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron said Gosnell didn’t care about his patients or their babies and “adopted a Henry Ford way of doing business: He created an assembly line. … My dog was treated better than he treated these babies and women.”

“Are you human?” Cameron asked the defendant. “He’s the one case that doesn’t deserve to be called human,” he told jurors.

Prosecutors agreed to two life sentences without parole. Gosnell will be sentenced Wednesday for the death of the third baby. He’ll also be sentenced for involuntary manslaughter in the medication overdose death of a patient and hundreds of other counts.

Prosecutors had asked for the death penalty because Gosnell was accused of killing more than one person and because his victims were particularly vulnerable. But Gosnell’s age — 72 — made his execution unlikely before his appeals were exhausted.

The case became a focal point in the national abortion debate. Abortion opponents said Gosnell was not uncommon among abortion providers and accused the news media of underplaying the story; abortion-rights advocates said he was a deplorable aberration whose case actually showed the need for safe, legal abortions.

Gosnell had few defenders besides his attorney, Jack McMahon, who said the prosecution of his African-American client was racially motivated and that “the media has been overwhelmingly against him.” He also said that the fetuses were not born alive — any movements or sounds were posthumous twitching or spasms.

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TUPELO, Miss. — What looked at first like classic terrorism — poisoned letters sent to the president and other public officials — now seems more likely to be the product of a local feud between two not-so-good-old boys straight out of a Faulkner story, albeit with Facebook pages.

In the past week, the FBI has arrested Kevin Curtis, released him, and then, on Saturday, arrested his online sparring partner, Everett Dutschke.

Each has accused the other of trying to frame him as the sender of ricin-tainted letters that, coinciding with the Boston Marathon bombing, reminded a jittery nation of the deadly anthrax attacks that followed 9/11.

Dutschke faces a federal charge of “knowingly developing, producing, stockpiling, transferring, acquiring, retaining and possessing a biological agent, toxin and delivery system, for use as a weapon, to wit: ricin.” The charge can result in a life sentence and a $250,000 fine. Dutschke is expected to appear in court Monday.

A terrorism motive, at least, might have some logic. But the story spinning out in this city of Elvis Presley’s birth is as implausible as an Elvis sighting.

Who knows what The King would have made of Curtis and Dutschke? But William Faulkner, the Nobel laureate who lived down the road in Oxford, would have appreciated their Southern Gothic obsessions and secrets, their eccentricities, their capacity for vendetta.

Curtis, 45, is a sometime Elvis impersonator with bipolar disorder who has long warned of a seemingly imaginary underground traffic in stolen body parts at the hospital from which he was fired as a janitor.

Dutschke, 41, is a blues band front man, martial arts teacher and failed political candidate and indicted child molester. He’s also a former member of Mensa, the society for those with high IQs.

If the sender of the ricin letters did come from Tupelo or environs, it would be the biggest crime here since the gangster Machine Gun Kelly robbed a local bank in 1932. Most people don’t know what to make of this case, other than they don’t like the attention.

Tupelo is known worldwide for Elvis, says local resident Carley Johnston, “and we want to keep it that way.”

Another perspective is offered by Curtis Wilke, a former national correspondent for the Boston Globe who teaches at the University of Mississippi.

“I’ve thought, ‘God, I wish I were still a reporter; it’d be fun to cover this story.’ ” Wilke says. “Neither of them seems very sophisticated. Make a weapon of mass destruction from a bunch of beans?”

Ricin is a potentially lethal poison made from castor beans. Earlier this month, letters with grains of it were mailed from Memphis to President Obama, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who is from Tupelo, and an 80-year-old local judge, Sadie Holland.

Terrorism experts have warned about ricin in aerosol form, but the FBI says this ricin was crude, as if the beans had been mixed in a blender. And Judge Holland’s son says she sniffed the letter with no ill effects.

Investigators immediately focused on Curtis, because the letters contained phrases like ones he often used online, including, “I am KC and I approve this message.”

He also had a possible motive. Holland had sentenced him to six months in jail in 2004 for assaulting a musician in his band (who also happened to have been an assistant district attorney).

Things looked so bad for Curtis that his brother issued a statement that Kevin sometimes failed to take medications prescribed to control his psychiatric disorder. “I was trying to help him legally,” the brother later told the local Northern Mississippi Daily Journal.

But when the FBI searched Curtis’ home, they found no trace of castor beans or anything else to corroborate the circumstantial evidence. The telltale phrasing, Curtis’ lawyers pointed out, could have been written by anyone familiar with his online rants.

Nor did Curtis seem a likely chemist. When questioned by the FBI, “I thought they said ‘rice,’ ” Curtis told reporters. “I told them, ‘I don’t even eat rice.’ “

Before they set him free, agents asked Curtis: Is there anyone who’d want to set you up?

Enter Dutschke. He and Curtis, who share an interest in music and tae kwon do, first met in the mid-2000s. Curtis saw in Dutschke, who was then putting out a newsletter, a publisher for his book about trafficking in harvested human organs. He even had a title: Missing Pieces.

When this didn’t come to pass, the two began to squabble. There was a physical confrontation at a buffet restaurant, after which they took things online.

Curtis, convinced Dutschke was spying on him, says he set a trap. He claimed on his Facebook page that he was a member of Mensa.

Dutschke, a proud Mensan, took the bait, denouncing Curtis as a liar and threatening to sue.

This was in 2010, after which Dutschke has said he had nothing to do with Curtis.

If Dutschke sent the ricin letters — even before his arrest Saturday, he had said he’s innocent — he could have been killing two birds with one stone.

In 2007, he ran unsuccessfully for the state Legislature against Judge Holland’s son Steve, the incumbent. Dutschke liked to compare Holland to Boss Hogg, the corrupt county commissioner on The Dukes of HazzardTV series. Once, at an event where the candidates were speaking, Holland got up on stage to rebuke Dutschke and demand that he apologize.

After Curtis was released and before he himself was arrested, Dutschke told the Associated Press that he had no quarrel with Holland: “Everybody loves Sadie, including me.”

Last Tuesday, when Curtis was freed, the feds rousted Dutschke from bed and searched his house. They also sealed off a shabby commercial strip where his former martial arts studio was located; investigators in hazmat suits carried material to a mobile lab they’d set up outside.

The studio had closed after Dutschke was charged earlier this year with fondling several girls who’d been students there. He pleaded not guilty and was released on $25,000 bail. He’d previously been convicted of indecent exposure in a case involving a minor in his neighborhood.

FBI agents arrested Dutschke around 1 a.m. Saturday at his one-story brick house in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Tupelo. FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden said he was taken into custody “without incident.” She referred questions about specific charges to federal prosecutors.

It’s hard to say whose image has fared worse — the FBI’s or Tupelo’s, a city of 37,000 proud of its reputation for tolerance and a certain elegance.

When Curtis was released, the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson editorialized that “America got a good lesson in ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ ”

“It’s bad publicity,” says Dick Guyton, a resident for all his 73 years and director of the Elvis Presley Birthplace and Museum. “And people don’t think too much of Mississippi to begin with.”

Sid Salter, a veteran political analyst in the state, disagrees: “The notion that the ricin case ‘reflects’ on Mississippi at all is ludicrous. It’s like suggesting that everyone who lives in rural Montana bears some sort of corporate guilt for the Unabomber.”

But Wilke, a native Mississippian, says “the woods here are full of colorful characters like them,” referring to Curtis and Dutschke. “Maybe that’s why we’ve produced so many great novelists.”

Contributing: The Associated Press; The (Jackson, Miss.)Clarion-Ledger

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TUPELO, Miss. — A local man whose home and business were searched as part of an investigation into ricin-poisoned letters sent to President Obama and other officials was arrested Saturday, the FBI said.

Everett Dutschke, 41, was arrested after days of speculation that he, and not another local man with whom he had been feuding — and who had himself had earlier been arrested in the case — had mailed the letters earlier this month.

The other recipients were Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, who comes from this city of 37,000, and an 80-year-old local judge, Sadie Holland.

The criminal complaint accused Dutschke of knowingly developing, producing, stockpiling, transferring, acquiring, retaining and possessing a biological agent for use as a weapon, and with attempting, threatening and conspiring to do the same. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted on all charges.

Dutschke faces a hearing Monday in federal court in Oxford, Miss.

On Tuesday, charges initially filed against Kevin Curtis, 45, a sometime Elvis impersonator, were dropped. The FBI said it had no physical evidence to support circumstantial evidence that had been based on similarities between the ricin letters and Curtis’ online writings. Asked who might have wanted to frame him, Curtis and his lawyers mentioned Dutschke.

Dutschke, who has feuded, mostly online, with Curtis over various matters, has a link to Judge Holland. In 2007, he ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the state Legislature against her son Steve, the Democratic incumbent. Dutschke compared Holland to Boss Hogg, the corrupt county commissioner on The Dukes of Hazzard TV series.

Once, at an event where the candidates were speaking, Judge Holland got up on stage to rebuke Dutschke and demand that he apologize.

Dutschke has had other problems with the law. Earlier this year, he was charged with sexually molesting several girls who had been students at his martial arts studio. He pleaded not guilty and was released on $25,000 bail. He previously was convicted of indecent exposure involving a minor in his neighborhood.

The letters addressed to Obama and Wicker never reached the intended recipients. Judge Holland handled the letter and sniffed it, with no ill effects, according to her son.

Dustchke told ClarionLedger.com in Jackson, Miss., this week that he feels targeted by Curtis’ defense, and that he didn’t know why his name was brought into it.

“I guess Kevin got desperate. I feel like he’s getting away with the perfect crime,” Dustchke told the website. “It has made my family incredibly unsafe. It has put a target on us, and it was reckless and irresponsible.”

On Monday, the FBI said federal authorities didn’t find any ricin in Curtis’ Corinth home or vehicle. On Tuesday, federal authorities including the 47th Civil Support Team, a full-time response team for emergencies or terrorist events that involve weapons of mass destruction or toxic industrial chemicals, began a search of Dutschke’s house.

Dutschke’s attorney, Lori Basham, told ClarionLedger.com this week that her client has cooperated with officials throughout the investigation.

Contributing: Kevin Johnson; John Bacon

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PHILADELPHIA — One clinic worker testified that she saw aborted fetuses moving, breathing and, once, “screeching.” Another described a 2-foot-long fetus that “didn’t have eyes or a mouth, but it was like … making this noise. … It sounded like a little alien.”

A third witness recalled how, as ordered, she used surgical scissors to snip the spine of an aborted fetus she’d found in a toilet, its arm still moving. “I did it once, and I didn’t do it again,” she said. “…it gave me the creeps.”

The creeps are an occupational hazard for jurors in the murder trial of Kermit Gosnell, accused of running a clinic where seven babies were allegedly killed after botched abortions and an adult patient was given a fatal overdose of Demerol.

Abortion opponents hope that the horrifying crimes attributed to this one defendant can shift the balance of power in an abortion debate that’s been deadlocked for decades.

The most recent Gallup poll reflects no marked change from those taken decades ago: 52% of Americans say abortion should be legal in some circumstances; 28% say legal in all circumstances; 18% say it should be illegal in all circumstances. It’s an issue that hasn’t been resolved and hasn’t gone away — “a constant agitating of the American soul,” in the words of columnist Peggy Noonan.

In the Gosnell trial, “the debate suddenly has a visual argument,” says Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that supports anti-abortion political candidates. “You look at pictures, and you think, ‘That’s a baby.’ “

One photo, taken by a clinic worker and shown at the trial, showed a fetus whose gestational age was estimated by the medical examiner at 28 weeks at the time of the abortion. When it was placed in a pan, its body curled up in the fetal position. Gosnell, former staffer Kareema Cross testified, joked, “The baby’s big enough that it could walk to the store.”

The prosecution rested Thursday. The defense, which begins this week, will try to show that there were no live births at the clinic — that the fetuses were aborted in utero — and that the adult patient died of unforeseen complications. It’s unclear whether Gosnell will take the stand.

Abortion opponents, such as USA TODAY opinion contributor Kirsten Powers, complained about what they said was insufficient coverage by established news organizations. (There has since been an increase in trial coverage.) Abortion rights advocates respond that the gruesome case suggests a need for wider access to abortion, not less. They say the trial depicts abortion not as it is, but as it was before the procedure was legalized by the Supreme Court in 1973 in Roe v. Wade, and as it will be again if Roe is reversed.

“I’ve never heard of this anywhere else,” says Eric Ferrero of Planned Parenthood, which provides reproduction-related health services, including abortions. “There aren’t Gosnells operating all over the country. This case is as unusual as it is unspeakable.”

How can he be sure? asks Anna Higgins of the Family Research Council, an anti-abortion group. “We don’t have regular inspections in most states. … Is there infanticide?”

ABORTION RESTRICTIONS EXPAND

The trial coincides with a campaign by abortion opponents, who were frustrated by the issue’s relative obscurity in the 2012 presidential election, to restrict abortion on the state level.

Planned Parenthood says that this year, 300 bills designed to restrict abortion access have been proposed in 42 states. This comes after a record 135 abortion restrictions passed by state legislatures over the previous two years, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

Despite Democratic gains in the national elections, Republicans control the governorship and legislatures in 23 states. That helps explain why, in recent months, North Dakota, Alabama, Kansas and Virginia have approved stringent abortion restrictions.

Kansas legislators approved a bill that says life begins at fertilization and would prevent abortion providers from claiming tax breaks and prohibit abortions based on sex selection. North Dakota banned abortions as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can be as early as six weeks.

In Arkansas, where Republican legislators overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe, abortions have been restricted after the 11th week.

Some new rules and regulations have been justified as necessary to protect the health of pregnant women and unborn children. Alabama and Mississippi, for example, have required doctors who do abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital; Virginia has required abortion clinics doing surgery to comply with standards for outpatient surgery centers.

Abortion rights advocates, such as Planned Parenthood, say some of these measures are designed primarily to drive up clinics’ costs and put them out of business.

Will the Gosnell case accelerate this trend?

Ferrero of Planned Parenthood says more state laws wouldn’t have stopped Gosnell; Pennsylvania had ones that were not enforced. Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, says many of the new and proposed state laws will drive out legitimate abortion providers: “The more restrictions we impose, the more we keep monsters like Gosnell in business.”

Her point may be illustrated by the story of Karnamaya Mongar, who was 41 and 16 weeks pregnant when she came to Gosnell’s clinic in 2009.

Mongar had reasons for ending the pregnancy. She was poor, spoke no English, and, after spending 20 years in a Nepalese refugee camp, had been in the USA for less than a year. She already had three children; with a fourth, there was no way she could hold a job. “She said, ‘We’re just getting started here,’ ” her daughter, Yashoda Gurung, testified last week in the trial.

Abortion is legal up to 24 weeks (the first two-thirds) of pregnancy in many states, but Mongar found that actually getting one can be difficult.

A clinic near her home in Woodbridge, Va., said it did not perform abortions after 14 weeks. That clinic directed her to one in Fredericksburg, Va., which also refused her and suggested a clinic in Washington, which in turn referred her to Gosnell’s in west Philadelphia.

She arrived Nov. 19, had the abortion and went into a coma after an unlicensed staffer gave her a dose of Demerol, apparently without knowing her weight; the clinic scale was broken, according to trial witnesses. She died the next day at a hospital.

A relative of Mongar’s, Damber Ghalley, testified that when he approached Gosnell to complain, “he said, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. I’ll be able to answer any question anywhere.’”

The Gosnell case — U.S. Rep Chris Smith, R-N.J., calls it “the trial of the century” — has injected emotion into a debate that couldn’t seem to get any more emotional.

Lydia Saad of the Gallup Organization, who has followed public opinion on abortion for decades, is skeptical it will have a lasting effect.

“These things tend to fade, like the reaction to the abortion clinic bombings in the past,” Saad says. “This is just one extreme case. I think it will be hard to base too much on it.”

‘HOUSE OF HORRORS’

Gosnell’s clinic was in a three-story brick building at 3801 Lancaster Ave. in west Philadelphia. It was named, without irony, the Women’s Medical Society. District Attorney Seth Williams has called it “a house of horrors,” and his office’s case was presented over five weeks in Courtroom 304 of the courthouse across from City Hall.

Witnesses described an institution where employees, many with personal or financial problems that left them few options, were paid meager wages off the books to perform tasks for which they were unlicensed and untrained, such as taking ultrasounds, administering anesthetics and other prescription drugs orally or intravenously, and assisting in abortions.

In an apparent attempt to standardize staffers’ tasks, Gosnell had them administer uniform dosages of painkilling medication and other drugs, according to one who testified, Latosha Lewis. Some patients, given inappropriately high doses of labor-inducing drugs, abruptly aborted and expelled their fetuses in toilets or on floors.

Testimony from Lewis and others indicated that Gosnell performed many illegal third-trimester abortions but always noted in the patient file the same at-the-legal-limit gestation period — 24.5 weeks.

Clinic workers described equipment that was filthy, broken or outmoded. Plastic instruments were reused. Fetal remains were stored in freezer bags, water jugs and pet food containers. Floors were stained with everything from patients’ dried blood to feces from cats that wandered freely. When members of a grand jury visited the premises, they wore hazmat suits.

In February 2010, a state-federal task force — on Gosnell’s trail for alleged prescription drug sales, not abortions — raided the clinic. It had been 17 years since a state health inspection. “Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on,” said Williams, the DA, “but no one put a stop to it.”

Why not? A grand jury report offered this explanation: “because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion.”

Jack McMahon, Gosnell’s lawyer, says his African-American client is the victim of a “prosecutorial lynching” and argues that he treated women even if they couldn’t pay up front or in full. “This black man,” he said in his opening statement last month, was charged “because of who he is, and where he works.”

COURTROOM 304

At 72, Gosnell is tall, freckled, graying and balding. Last week, he sat calmly in court, suit coat buttoned, a copy of the textbook Knight’s Forensic Pathology at hand. He whispered in the ear of his lawyer and took notes on a yellow legal pad.

Occasionally, he gazed out benignly at those in the courtroom, including reporters. His stately demeanor offered no hint that he could face the death penalty. His appearance — dark suit, light blue shirt, perfectly knotted floral print tie — seemed the antithesis of the chaotic, rundown clinic described by witnesses, and his demeanor betrayed no hint that he faced seven charges of first-degree murder (the babies) and one of third-degree murder (Mongar).

His photo sat atop a crime family-style organizational chart on the wall in front of the courtroom. Clinic staffers’ photos were arrayed in rows beneath his, like so many mob capos and soldiers.

In the well of the court, the prosecution had assembled equipment from his clinic, including a defibrillator that didn’t work and a recovery chair whose side was streaked with blood.

Prosecutor Edward Cameron noted that the clinic’s files often were stained with bodily fluids. As he passed around a patient file folder, he urged a court clerk to put on gloves before handling it. “It has some sort of dried red substance on it,” Cameron warned. “It stinks.”

Contributing: The Associated Press

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