Anti-Choice Violence at Clinic Entrances

In the wake of escalating violence — including bombings, arson, kidnappings, and homicide — directed at reproductive health clinics that provide abortions, the 1994 Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act was created to keep the rising tide of anti-choice extremism from blocking women's access to legal medical care.

The law established "Federal criminal penalties and civil remedies for certain violent, threatening, obstructive and destructive conduct that is intended to injure, intimidate or interfere with persons seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services." This certainly sounds good, yet a new series on RH Reality Check asks: "Is the FACE Act Being Enforced?"

RH Reality Check distinguishes the "bead-holders" from the "bomb-throwers." The bead-holders "often recite rosary prayers, sing hymns or try to distribute well-intended but medically inaccurate literature outside the clinic. The more zealous of the bunch resort to shouting at patients about abortion alternatives." On the other hand, the bomb-throwers either, well, literally throw bombs, or otherwise engage in violence and threats of violence, and are generally linked into with an anti-choice extremist, domestic terrorist network. These are the truly dangerous ones.

After Dr. George Tiller, a late-term abortion provider, was murdered in his church by an anti-choice extremist last year, a clinic protester with ties to the Army of God in Allentown, P.A., asked a clinic escort — usually volunteers who help women get instead the clinic safely with a minimum of harassment — "Which way would you rather die — by bullet or the slow torturous death of a knife?" This despite the fact that the harasser, John Dunkle had already been hit with a permanent injunction under the FACE Act, which banned him from intimidating clinic staff, and specifically from making threats on their life, after he blogged that a doctor who provides abortions should be shot in the head.

RH Reality Check writes that federal prosecutions just aren't keeping pace with extremist clinic violence and harassment (as Dunkle's continued freedom suggests). From 1977 to 1993, the National Abortion Federation counted 1,641 incidents of violence at clinics and thousands more disturbances, but under the FACE Act, there have only been a few dozen prosecutions. In addition to cases of arson, acid throwing, and other acts of extreme violence since the passage of the FACE Act, the death threats and other forms of harassment and intimidation have continued as anti-choice extremists look for ways to escape heavy sentences for federal crimes while still harming clinics' ability to function.

Photo credit: cambodia4kidsorg