Opposition and Intimidation: The Abortion Wars and Strategies of Political Harassment

4. CREATING A NEW GAME: The Scope of Anti-Abortion Violence and Harassing Tactics

Chapter 4 CRE ATING A NEW GAME The Scope of Anti-Abortion Violence and Harassing Tactics The abortion dispute is not merely about conceptual disagreement. It’s about justice. It’s about violence, bloodshed, and victims who need to be defended in the midst of a policy permitting 4,000 babies a day to be killed. To “agree to disagree” means to cease to defend the absolute rights of the victim. The proposal to “agree to disagree” presumes the issue is about people disagreeing over abortion, not about people being killed by abortion. It is a false solution. —Reverend Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, speaking at a pro-life event, December 1999 In the past four decades, anti-abortion activities have run the gamut from legal protest to quasi-legal protest to illegal protesting and violence. The trends in activity have waxed and waned throughout the years, often responding to changing strategies and political opportunities. One marked trend is the decrease in extreme incidents of violence such as arson, bombing, and murder following the passage of the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act (18 U.S.C. 248) and a corollary increase in protest activities around the same time period. Throughout the 1980s direct action groups of the pro-life movement regularly incorporated confrontational tactics into their repertoire of action. In 1985, among abortion providers, 85 percent reported that they had been subjected to at least one form of anti-abortion harassment,1 including, but not limited to, picketing, clinic blockades, jamming of telephone lines, invasion of the facility, bomb threats, and distribution of anti-abortion literature. Typically, the harassment was not isolated to one occasion or form; rather it was part of a continual campaign against the provider. For example, 82 percent of providers reported 105 that they experienced multiple forms of harassment (Forrest and Henshaw 1987). In addition, 19 percent of providers received bomb threats, and 16 percent had experienced picketing at their homes or the homes of staff members. By 2000, over half (52 percent) of abortion providers continued to be the targets of at least one form of anti-abortion harassment (Finer and Henshaw 2003). Even more striking is the proportion of providers (82 percent) experiencing some form of anti-abortion activity at large-scale abortion facilities (a large-scale abortion provider is de‹ned as a nonhospital facility that performs 400 or more abortions a year). The motivation and support for the various types of pro-life activities are not uniform across the movement. The three branches of the movement implement different strategies to achieve different aspects of the same ‹nal goal of ending abortion. The political branch focuses on making incremental institutional changes through national and state political institutions, in the hope that this strategy will give way to a permanent, legal reversal of Roe. Groups in this branch of the movement focus on supporting bills that make small inroads into criminalizing abortion or, at a minimum, decreasing the accessibility of abortion services. The outreach branch concentrates its efforts on aiding women who are facing unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. Crisis pregnancy centers offer services to help pregnant women and encourage them to keep their children or place them up for adoption. Direct action groups focus on the immediacy of preventing abortions by trying to in›uence women seeking services to abstain from getting abortions and encouraging professionals to cease providing the services. Pro-Life Action League, one of the oldest direct action groups in the movement, explains the motivation and urgency of its confrontational tactics in its mission statement. We confront the abortionists and abortion promoters wherever they are. We picket and demonstrate outside abortion facilities, pro-abortion events, the of‹ces of abortion organizations like NOW and Planned Parenthood and even abortionists’ houses. We in‹ltrate their meetings and groups. (Pro-Life Action League 2006) While protesting is certainly endorsed by the direct action branch of the movement, illegal and violent activities are not; the philosophy and actions of extremist groups have been vociferously denounced by the pro-life movement (Schabner 2004; National Right to Life Committee 2004). David Bereit, who 106 O P P O S I T I O N A N D I N T I M I D A T I O N heads up one of the most media-featured pro-life direct action groups in the country, explains where...