Today is the seventh anniversary of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller. Tiller was the medical director of Women's Health Care Services in Wichita, Kansas, one of just three clinics across the nation that at the time provided late-term abortions. When Scott Roeder walked up to the doctor at his church and shot him in the head, it wasn’t the first time Tiller had suffered violence. He had been shot in both arms in 1993, and his clinic was firebombed in 1986. Violence has been a part of the forced-birther movement from early on.
The National Abortion Federation reports eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings, 181 arsons, and more than 6,000 instances of other forms of violence against abortion clinics and providers since 1977.
For obvious reasons, when someone phones in or otherwise makes a threat against an abortion provider or clinic, it is taken seriously. Some doctors who provide abortions wear bulletproof vests. Tiller often did, although he was not wearing his the morning he was shot. And a vest won’t necessarily protect a doctor who wears it all the time. Dr. Warren Hern is a Colorado physician who has been providing abortions in Boulder since 1974, starting out as the medical director of the Boulder Valley Clinic. It’s the first free-standing abortion clinic in Colorado, which I and 14 others co-founded in 1973, and it’s still operating as the Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center. Hern told the Los Angeles Times in 2009 after Tiller was murdered:
"I think [Tiller's murder is] the inevitable consequence of more than 35 years of constant antiabortion terrorism, harassment and violence," he said. "I get messages from these people saying, 'Don't bother wearing a bulletproof vest, we're going for a head shot.'"
Forced-birthers are inventive with this domestic terrorism. Last year at Ebony magazine, Renee Bracey Sherman interviewed David S. Cohen and Krysten Connon, authors of the book, Living in the Crosshairs: The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism. The pair interviewed abortion providers nationwide:
“Abortion providers regularly experience various forms of individualized harassment, intimidation, and even violence,” Cohen tells EBONY.com. “Not every abortion provider does, but many do, as it is a part of the anti-abortion movement’s strategy to end abortion.” [...] For Black abortion providers and clinic workers, this violence is more racialized and intense. They’re often accused of being “race traitors” or “killing the Black race” simply for providing healthcare. In their book, Cohen and Connon share stories of providers who remember being called “a filthy Negro abortionist”.
Black abortion providers like Dr. McLemore know this experience all too well. “When I worked for Planned Parenthood, I had several protestors ask me ‘how as a Black woman can I participate in the murder of black children’.” [...]
This belittlement of Black abortion providers’ work often takes the form of denying their professional credentials because racist protesters simply don’t believe that the Black staff entering the clinic would be physicians or nurses. “There’s an intentional refusal to call me doctor or give me professional courtesies based on my chosen craft,” says Dr. Willie Parker, an abortion provider in Alabama. “They’re racializing the fact that I provide abortion care. As if there’s additional shame.”
The forced-birthers have found that working through the state legislatures to make abortions more difficult to obtain, more expensive, and more time-consuming is increasingly effective. But that hasn’t ended the various forms of violence and aggressive verbal confrontations against abortion providers and clinic patients. Add racial bigotry to the mix and you have a quintessential American story.