Six years ago, Emily Lyons, a registered nurse in Birmingham, Alabama, thought an act of terrorism could never happen to her.
She lived a normal life, one her husband Jeff said was close to the white picket fence picture Americans often dream about.
But in a moment, on the morning of January 29, 1998, it all changed.
That day a pipe bomb, filled with dynamite and 1-inch roofing nails, had been placed in front of the women’s health and abortion clinic where Lyons worked. Lyons stood 12 feet away when it was detonated from across the street.
In the blast, a police officer was killed and Emily was left severely disabled for the rest of her life.
No one can understand the pain and suffering Emily Lyons has gone through, undergoing 19 operations in the last six years to survive the incident.
But last night she stood in Olscamp to tell the audience that the person who created this violence did not win. The bomber did not defeat her or the clinic — violence had not worked.
“People call me a bombing victim,” Lyons said. “But they are wrong, I am a bombing survivor.”
Before the event she said she was a pretty quiet person, one who did not like attention. Afterward, she knew she needed to make people aware of violence in the United States.
“If I get hurt, but no one else does, it’s worth telling my story,” Lyons said.
And then she told her story, and words do little justice in explaining it, so Lyons and her husband showed a video full of graphic images of her surgeries after the bombing.
The video showed the surgeries Emily went through step-by-step. These surgeries included removal of her right eye, the surgery needed to save her left eye, the detailed surgeries on her destroyed legs, surgery to fix her mutilated right hand, plastic surgery to reconstruct her face, surgery on her destroyed eardrum, surgery on the fist-sized hole in her abdomen and the list goes on. She still cannot see well, cannot write well with her deformed right hand and cannot stand for long increments of time.
During the video presentation there were also pictures of X-rays showing the many roofing nails and shrapnel embedded in her body.
To Lyons and her husband, these graphic images are essential to show people the true picture of terrorism and violence.
“People don’t see what the audience saw tonight,” Jeff Lyons said. “They don’t see that end of the violence and that is part of the message we want to get across.”
Emily got to see that violence first hand and it fueled her to fight for women’s and reproductive rights.
“I didn’t think there were people out there willing to kill to take those rights away from me,” Emily said.
But the statistics show that Emily has not been the only victim of violence against abortion providers. Since 1977, there have been 4,203 acts of violence, including seven murders, 17 attempted murders, 41 bombings and 169 arson cases in the United States and Canada, according to the National Abortion Federation.
Because of these statistics, Emily is fighting back by telling her story.
“Freedom has a high price — but it is worth it,” she said.
She said people need to fight for their freedoms and not wait until something happens to them or someone they love.
“Someone once said to me, ‘Each person is one injustice away from being an activist,'” Emily said. “I don’t want it to reach that point.”
