"Why Clinic Violence is Obama's Problem" ....American Prospect

Why Clinic Violence is Obama's Problem

Dr. George Tiller's murder should push the federal government to get serious about fighting harassment of abortion providers.


Ann Friedman | June 1, 2009 | web only


http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=why_clinic_violence_is_obamas_problem

I shouldn't have been shocked to see the news that Dr. George Tiller, an outspoken advocate for abortion rights and one of the nation's few late-term abortion providers, was gunned down yesterday morning as he attended church. Despite the fact that it's been more than a decade since an abortion provider has been murdered in America, I pay enough attention to hard-line anti-choice groups to know that a violent incident like Tiller's murder was all too predictable.

Tiller's clinic, Women's Health Care Services, was bombed in mid-1980s. In the '90s, it was the subject of blockades, bomb threats, and a shooting attack -- Tiller sustained gunshots to both arms. Just this month, Tiller's clinic was vandalized, with security cameras and outdoor lights damaged and the downspouts plugged, causing rain to pour through the roof. Protesters routinely gathered outside Tiller's church. In 2007, two men were arrested for disrupting services to speak out against him. Tiller often had a bodyguard by his side.

For workers and volunteers in clinics that provide abortions, the threats don't stop once they drive away from work. They extend to their private lives.

"Being a provider (or working for one) in this city is difficult. It involves people going through your trash, talking to your neighbor kids on the street and asking them if they know the lady down the street works for a baby-killer," says Stacy Tiemeyer, a volunteer with Planned Parenthood in Wichita. "It's not a small town, you wouldn't know private details about someone's life just because you see them in the grocery, at church, in the post office. Publicizing and targeting people takes work. It takes following them from work, taking pictures of their license plates, watching their house."

From the immediate post-Roe years to the mid-1990s, clinic violence and blockades were a constant threat. After Dr. David Gunn was assassinated in 1993, Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which specifically banned such acts as blocking clinic doors, trespassing, making violent threats, arson, vandalism, stalking clinic employees, and other forms of violence. Many of these acts were illegal already, but the law made clear that targeting a clinic with these crimes merited a federal response.

While FACE improved the situation (the number of clinics experiencing severe violence dropped from 52 percent in 1994 to 20 percent in 2000), it didn't succeed in ending the violence. Attacks against women's health clinics -- both those that provide abortions and those that do not -- continued throughout the Bush years. According to the National Abortion Federation, since 2000 abortion providers have reported 14 arsons, 78 death threats, 66 incidents of assault and battery, 117 anthrax threats, 128 bomb threats, 109 incidents of stalking, 541 acts of vandalism, one bombing, and one attempted murder.

Add one murder to that list.

The last time an abortion provider was murdered, when Dr. Barnett Slepian was killed in 1998, it was a wake-up call to the fact that passing the FACE Act wasn't enough. Attorney General Janet Reno established the National Task Force on Violence against Health Care Providers, which committed the Department of Justice to enforcing FACE, coordinating information on national anti-abortion extremist groups, funding clinic safety efforts, and training local law enforcement. The following year, the White House budget requested $4.5 million to beef up security at abortion clinics. But other than finally bringing James Kopp, Slepian's killer, to justice in 2003, the task force was largely dormant for eight years under the Bush administration.

Attorney General Eric Holder released a statement responding to Tiller's murder, promising that "Federal law enforcement is coordinating with local law enforcement officials in Kansas on the investigation of this crime, and I have directed the United States Marshals Service to offer protection to other appropriate people and facilities around the nation." He also pledged to take steps to prevent related acts of violence. Obama expressed that he was "shocked and outraged" by the killing. Neither mentioned the FACE Act or reviving the task force.

Tiller's death is a wake-up call to the fact that our existing laws and regulatory bodies to protect against clinic violence aren't working as well as they should. As written, FACE provides a lot of protection for reproductive health providers. But we need an active task force -- or some other means of accountability -- to make sure the law is fully enforced. This is something Obama's Justice Department could commit to doing tomorrow, sending a strong signal that this type of domestic terrorism is not acceptable.

More of the article at.......


http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=why_clinic_violence_is_obamas_problem

Hopefully the worst of these Christian Falangists will be preaching in a supermax prison soon.