[dumadegg]

La Crosse Tribune: http://lacrossetribune.com/news/loca...cc4c03286.html

The Marshfield man who told authorities he came to town with a gun, bullets and plans to kill an abortion doctor was charged Friday with attempted first-degree intentional homicide in Dane County Circuit Court.

Ralph W. Lang, 63, said that after shooting an abortion provider at a Planned Parenthood in Madison, he was next going to go to an abortion clinic in Milwaukee, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday.

A portrait of Lang emerged as an unemployed loner who grew up on a farm with 10 siblings. He has strong anti-abortion convictions and had previously protested - and in 2007 been arrested - at the same Planned Parenthood on the Far East Side that he appeared ready to attack on Thursday.

"He definitely stood out," said Kat Wagner, a reporter for the Catholic Herald, Madison's diocesan newspaper, who met and interviewed Lang when he would hold graphic anti-abortion signs, often standing alone outside the clinic in 2008 in events organized by Madison-based Vigil for Life. "He seemed very gentle but very convinced that abortion was wrong."

Officials with Vigil for Life couldn't be reached for comment. Another anti-abortion rights group, Wisconsin Right to Life, issued a statement condemning what it described as a "heinous act which is in total opposition" to the group's mission.

The leader of a national abortion rights group said that Lang's progression is not unusual among the small number of anti-abortion protesters who turn violent.

"This fits a pattern," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, describing "the escalation of activities from perhaps just protesting to making threats to carrying out threats."