Officials say Saturday’s bomb in Palm Springs, California, was set off by Guy Edward Bartkus, a 25-year-old who was found dead at the scene and is believed to have been killed by the blast. Authorities seem quite certain that the fertility clinic damaged in the explosion was the target of Bartkus’ wrath. With the who and the what of the crime fairly established, the more complex question of why remains. What was the reason for the attack?

The FBI quickly became the lead agency in this investigation when it determined the motive for the attack on the fertility clinic was ideological, and as I covered this event for MSNBC, my initial theory, based on my law enforcement experience, was that the suspected bomber may have been angry that some fertility clinics that provide IVF treatments discard some embryos  that aren’t implanted into patients’ uteruses. The discarding of embryos has upset some anti-abortion-rights activists, but officials now believe it isn’t the potential discarding of embryos that motivated the bomber. They think it was the opposite: that the clinic was a tangible representation of human reproduction.