DENVER – If the Planned Parenthood shooter sought to dissuade women from seeking abortions, history has shown that fear and life-threatening situations don’t prevent women from ending unwanted pregnancies, the nonprofit’s leader told The Gazette.

Long before abortions were made legal in Roe v. Wade, women consented to being blindfolded and taken to undisclosed locations where surgical abortions were done in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, said Vicki Cowart, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. They took dangerous chemicals to cause miscarriages and often times harmed themselves with coat hangers, she said.

“We’re not going to stop women from having abortions by terrifying abortion providers. We’re not going to stop women from having abortions by making them illegal. We know this. We have the history and it’s not very old,” Cowart said in an interview with The Gazette. “A woman is a person who has a moral agency and an ability to know what she needs, and she will make that decision regardless of the impediments that people put in front of her.”

The suspected shooter has offered a brief glimpse into what might have motivated someone to take a semi-automatic rifle to a Planned Parenthood clinic the day after Thanksgiving. Robert L. Dear, Jr. called himself a “warrior for the babies” during a Dec. 9 court appearance, when he was charged with 179 felony counts, including first-degree murder.

Two civilians and a police officer were killed in the shooting and nine others were wounded.

The five-hour standoff that ensued destroyed much of Colorado Springs’ lone clinic. Police completed their investigation of the clinic and returned it to Planned Parenthood on Monday.

An armored vehicle known as a Bearcat crashed through parts of the building to rescue patients and staff hiding from the gunman.

“We have a vigorous construction project underway,” Cowart said. Debris removal has begun and plans are being made to repair the facility.

The clinic will reopen as soon as possible, even if only a portion of the building is ready, she said. Meanwhile, patients have to go to Denver-area clinics for Planned Parenthood appointments.

“We provide surgical abortions in five locations across our four-state region and in each of those locations we see women from great distances,” Cowart said. “We see women coming from Texas. We see women coming from North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. That tells you how difficult it is for many women to access an abortion provider. So now we’ve taken one of the provider locations away from an already challenged system of providers.”

The clinic offers more than just abortion services.

Patients, many of whom are low-income, uninsured or want to seek services discretely, use Planned Parenthood as a care provider for birth control, annual screening appointments , testing for sexually transmitted diseases and more.

Cowart said it’s unclear if Planned Parenthood has lost patients out of fear following the shooting in Colorado Springs.

“We don’t know who is not calling us,” Cowart said. “We don’t know who is a regular patient and we’re just not hearing from them, but we’ve heard from some patients calling to ask ‘When are you opening? How soon can I come back? We’ve got notes and calls and candy and cookies and flowers and a lot of our health centers have just been enveloped in love from our community.”

She did said Planned Parenthood has lost some staff because of the incident.

“This work is not for everyone. No one deserves to be shot at when they go to work. No one deserves to have to fear for their lives to pursue health care or to pursue the provision of health care,” Cowart said. “We’ve all been rocked by this event in Colorado Springs, but I have heard absolute resolution from staff members who were in that building and staff members throughout this system who say ‘this will not deter me.'”

There were 15 employees in the building when the shooting began. One employee immediately fled out a back door but stayed on site and provided medical assistance to those injured, she said.

“I just want to say how much we believe in our own people and they made such good decisions that day,” Cowart said. “They were so smart and so brave and they personally, I believe, are responsible for saving a lot of lives.”

Cowart said she couldn’t help clarify the timeline of events before Dear surrendered, in part because she isn’t sure what occurred.

“It was five hours of chaos,” she said. “I’ve heard conflicting stories.”

According to police radio communications during the event, the shooter was outside the building shooting around a corner at police from a side of the building that is adjacent to a large open space before going inside.

The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs police officer who was killed, Officer Garret Swasey, was shot on the north side of the building by dumpsters adjacent to the open space, the recordings indicate. The other two victims, Ke’Arre Stewart and Jennifer Markovsky, were also shot outside the building.

At some point the shooter went inside and spent the next several hours shooting out at police.

Police tried to keep the suspect pinned down so he couldn’t get to the people hiding inside – who officers communicated with and extracted from the facility.

It’s unclear whether the suspect was unable to move about the facility because of police tactics or because of security features inside the building. Either way, Cowart said the outcome could have been much worse.

“As soon as they realized something was going on they notified the authorities and then they … dispersed around the building and got into safer spaces,” she said. “Some people were truly in locked rooms and had a modicum of security, but that’s what they learn, run, hide, fight.”

Vicki Cowart, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountians, speaks Saturday, Nov. 28, 2015, during a vigil at the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in downtown Colorado Springs for the three killed in the shooting at the Planned Parenthood clinic Friday, Nov. 27, 2015. (The Gazette, Christian Murdock)