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Of course, James Bond, er... Rep. Sean Cross Peter T. King - "U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. "is not saying he's staying awake at night because of what's coming from anti-abortion demonstrators..." - doesn't think anti-abortion violence is a big deal. “The Extent of Radicalization in the (Racist) Right Wing American Christian Anti-Abortion (Anti-Woman & Anti-America) Community and That Community’s Response”
Murder, attempted murder, and other violence resulting from the radicalization of the American Christian Anti-Abortion Community.On March 10, 1993 Dr.David Gunn “was shot to death outside his abortion clinic here today when a man who prayed for the physician's soul stepped forward from a group of antiabortion protesters and opened fire, according to police and witnesses. Last summer in Montgomery, Ala., an old-fashioned "wanted" poster of Gunn was distributed at a rally for Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry, AP said. The poster included a picture of Gunn, his home phone number and other identifying information. The posters were designed to encourage abortion opponents to harass doctors working at clinics operated by Gunn in Alabama. This morning, police initially were called to simply squelch an antiabortion protest at the clinic. When they arrived, police said, Michael Frederick Griffin, 31, of Pensacola told them he had just shot Gunn” Michael Frederick Griffin and the “spiritual adviser” “Officially it is Michael F. Griffin who is on trial for the killing of a doctor outside an abortion clinic here a year ago this month. But looming over the case is the brooding figure of John Burt, a charismatic local anti-abortion leader who, Mr. Griffin's lawyers say, brainwashed their client and drove him to commit murder. No one disputes that Dr. David Gunn was shot to death last March 10 outside the Pensacola Women's Medical Services clinic during an anti-abortion demonstration organized and led by Mr. Burt, the Northwest Florida regional director of the national anti-abortion group Rescue America. Mr. Griffin's chief lawyer, Robert Kerrigan, contends that Mr. Burt, a 55-year-old minister and former member of the Ku Klux Klan who operates a home for pregnant, drug-addicted and battered women near Pensacola, drove his client to a "nervous breakdown" by bombarding him with anti-abortion propaganda. That brainwashing campaign, Mr. Kerrigan says, included videos, books, prayer sessions, use of an effigy of Dr. Gunn and even a funeral for a pair of aborted fetuses. In 1986, Mr. Burt broke into an abortion clinic here, overturning furniture, damaging medical equipment and slamming the clinic's director into a wall. He was later convicted of burglary and assault. Today he remains unrepentant about that incident or his role as "spiritual adviser" to four young people who bombed three abortion clinics here on Christmas 1984. On July 29, 1994, Dr. John Britton and James Barrett were murdered by Paul Hill, a former minister. A handful of activists who knew Hill today sought to justify his alleged deed. C. Roy McMillan, executive director of the Christian Action Group in Jackson, Miss., said in a telephone interview, "It seems apparent that Paul has terminated a terminator... . I don't find it a sin to kill some one who is fixing to exterminate children." On December 30, 1994, Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols were murdered by John Salvi in two separate clinic attacks in Brookline, Massachusetts. Five other people were wounded. Salvi was arrested the next day in Norfolk, Virginia…Salvi was firing shots at yet another clinic - he confessed to the murders. “Witnesses testified during the trial that he had shouted, ‘This is what you get! You should pray the rosary!’ January 29, 1998, http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/30/us/bomb-kills-guard-at-an-alabama-abortion-clinic.html">Bomb Kills Guard at an Alabama Abortion Clinic “In what is believed to be the first fatal bombing of an abortion clinic in the United States, an off-duty police officer was killed and a nurse critically wounded in a blast early today at a clinic on Birmingham's south side. The explosion at the New Woman, All Women Health Care Clinic, long a target of protesters, went off at about 7:30 A.M., just as the clinic was opening, said the city's police chief, W.M. Coppage. The bomb, believed to have been a small homemade device planted somewhere just outside the front of the clinic, killed Robert D. Sanderson, 35, an eight-year police veteran who was working part time as a guard at the clinic. The blast also badly injured Emily Lyons, a 41-year-old nurse who was opening the clinic. Ms. Lyons, in surgery all day today, was wounded in one eye and her face, and both legs were seriously injured. Although five people have been killed by gunfire at abortion clincs since 1993, Officer Sanderson was apparently the first person to die in the bombing of a clinic, said Federal agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and Vicki Saporta, executive director of the National Abortion Federation, based in Washington.” Eric Rudolph“Rudolph did epitomize the modern militiaman. After his father died in 1981, his mother moved the family from Florida to rural Nantahala, N.C. When she enrolled Eric and his siblings in school, she refused to give their Social Security numbers, fearing the government could track them. She introduced them to several churches that followed "Christian Identity," a rabidly anti-Semitic philosophy; in ninth grade, Eric wrote an essay denying that the Holocaust took place.” From 1994 Anti-abortionists and white supremacists make common cause"Bigots and terrorists have long hung around the fringes of the anti-abortion movement, but connections that have recently come to light among the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi skinheads, and anti-abortionists now threaten to discredit anti-abortion groups. These connections are more than a fluke. Religious zealotry, nostalgia for a more culturally "pure" America, and a frightening rhetoric that encourages violence in the name of deeply held ideals fuels white supremacists and many anti-abortionists alike. It is not surprising, then, that the membership and leadership of these groups tend to overlap. Even as some leaders of the anti-abortion movement hurried to distance themselves from the recent vicious attacks on doctors and clinics, the Florida-based Templar Knights of the Ku Klux Klan sponsored a rally on August 21 in support of Paul Hill, the man accused of shooting Dr. Britton and his escort, James Barrett. White supremacist leaders have seized on abortion as a new rallying point for the White Revolution. Tim Bishop, a representative of the Aryan Nations, bragged about joining the anti-abortion movement in an interview for Reform Judaism magazine: "Lots of our people join in.... It's part of our Holy War for the pure Aryan race." October 23, 1998, “ A sniper wielding a high-powered rifle from the cover of darkness shot and killed a well-known abortion doctor Friday night just days after U.S. and Canadian police warned of such an attack, citing four previous shootings against abortion doctors at this time of year in Canada and upstate New York. Barnett Slepian, 52, was killed by a single shot fired through a window as he stood in the kitchen of his home about 10 p.m. in this Buffalo suburb, police said today. Slepian, for years a defiant target of antiabortion protesters here, had just returned from a synagogue with his wife and four sons, aged seven to 15, Amherst police said.” James Kopp was convicted of Dr. Slepian's murder after finally being apprehended in France in 2001. “The arrest of Mr. Kopp, 46, was made possible in large part by the communication he kept with those from his past: two anti-abortion activists in Brooklyn who were charged on Thursday with plotting to help Mr. Kopp slip back into the United States. There were other shared arrests. For example, in November 1991, Mr. Kopp and Ms. Marra shackled themselves to a heavy metal object outside the door of an abortion clinic in Levittown, N.Y. The object was so difficult to crack, Sgt. Gregory Friedrich recalled yesterday, that the police placed the two protesters on a cart, wheeled them into a van and took them to the Emergency Service Bureau office in Garden City, where they finally cut it open with an abrasive saw. Both protesters were later convicted on misdemeanor charges. And for years afterward, the Nassau County police kept the metallic object as a training tool in case the protesters returned.” May 31, 2009 Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed by Scott Roeder as Tiller served as an usher at church in Wichita, Kansas. “ George Tiller, one of only a few doctors in the nation who performed abortions late in pregnancy, was shot to death here Sunday in the foyer of his longtime church as he handed out the church bulletin. Dr. Tiller had long been at the center of the abortion debate here, one that rarely seemed to quiet much in this southern Kansas city of about 358,000. In 1993, Rachelle Shannon, from rural Oregon, shot Dr. Tiller in both arms. Two years earlier, during Operation Rescue’s “Summer of Mercy” protests, thousands of anti-abortion protesters tried to block off the clinic, the site of a bombing in 1986. Friends of Dr. Tiller also described regular incidents of vandalism at the clinic, and a barrage of threats to him and his family — threats they say had concerned him deeply for years.” “ When Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller stood trial in March on charges he violated state law in providing late-term abortions, the man now accused of killing him made a point of attending the hearings. At the time of Roeder’s arrest Sunday afternoon along Interstate 35 in Johnson County, a television station captured the vehicle on video. There on the dashboard was a note that read “Cheryl” and “Op Rescue” with a phone number. Cheryl Sullenger, senior policy adviser for Operation Rescue out of Wichita, said Tuesday that she has spoken to Roeder in the past, but she said he would initiate the contact. She said she hasn’t had any recent contact with him. Sullenger served about two years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic in California in 1988. She has since renounced violent action.” Not A Lone Wolf"Over the past six months, I have interviewed Scott Roeder more than a dozen times, met several times with his supporters at the Sedgwick County Courthouse in Wichita where he was tried and convicted, and permissibly recorded numerous three-way telephone conversations Roeder had me place to his friends. Using information gleaned from these sources, along with public records, it is possible to piece together the close, long-term and ongoing relationship between Roeder and other anti-abortion extremists who advocate murder and violent attacks on abortion providers. While under financial stress in 1992, Roeder happened upon right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson’s 700 Club on television. He claims he fell to his knees and became a born-again Christian. According to his own recollections and those of his ex-wife, he immediately fixated on what he considered two earthly evils: taxes and abortion. In very short order, he affiliated himself with Christian anti-government groups such as the Freemen militia and eventually became involved with antiabortion groups such as Operation Rescue and the Army of God, the latter of which openly sanctions the use of violence to stop abortion. Roeder told me that his first act as an anti-abortion activist was to protest outside a Kansas City women’s clinic. Among the protestors he came to know were Anthony Leake, a proponent of the “justifiable homicide”of abortion doctors, and Eugene Frye, the owner of a Kansas City construction company who, together with another antiabortion activist, had been arrested in 1990 for attempting to reinsert the feeding tube of a Missouri woman in a persistent vegetative state. Frye had also been arrested for blockading abortion clinics during the 1991 Summer of Mercy in Wichita, which was organized by Operation Rescue." History of Violence of the (Racist) Right Wing American Christian Anti-Abortion (& Anti-America) Community. (spread sheets listing the murders, attempted murders, assaults, bombings and assorted other acts of violence by the anti-abortion community) " Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, there has been an organized campaign by anti-abortion extremists which has resulted in escalating levels of violence against women's health care providers. In an attempt to stop abortion, anti-abortion extremists have chosen to take the law into their own hands. What began as peaceful protests with picketing moved to harassing clinic staff and patients as they entered clinics and eventually escalated to blockading clinic entrances. This foundation of harassment led to violence with the first reported clinic arson in 1976 and a series of bombings in 1978. Arsons and bombings have continued until this day. Anti-abortion extremists have also used chemicals to block women's access to abortion employing butyric acid to vandalize clinics and sending anthrax threat letters to frighten clinic staff. In the early 1990s, anti-abortion extremists concluded that murdering providers was the only way to stop abortion. The first provider was murdered in 1993. Since then, there have been seven subsequent murders and numerous attempted murders of clinic staff and physicians, several of which occurred in their own homes. In 2009, NAF member Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in his church in Wichita, Kansas."
Community ResponseRally To Support Murder Suspect
Abortion foes plan to mark the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide with a rally for James Kopp, left, who is awaiting trial on murder charges in the slaying of a doctor who performed abortions.
The Jan. 22 rally, coming a few weeks before the trial's expected start, is meant to convince potential jurors that the 1998 shooting of the doctor, Barnett A. Slepian, in his suburban Buffalo home was justifiable, said Jonathan O'Toole, a rally organizer, in an interview published yesterday in The Buffalo News.
Neal Horsley, who runs a Web site called Abortioncams.com, said his organization would be taking photos of women visiting a city abortion clinic. Marilynn Buckham, the executive director of Buffalo's Womenservices clinic, where Dr. Slepian worked, called the plans to photograph patients ''the height of trying to intimidate and terrorize women.''
Neal Horsley "The death of Dr. Slepian would soon make a celebrity of Neal Horsley. Horsley claims now that the morning after Slepian's murder, he found a list on the Internet of abortion providers who had been wounded or murdered. After adding the names to his Nuremberg Files site, he grayed out the names of those who had been wounded. And then he put a line through the names of the dead. It was Horsley who Clayton Waagner, a self-described anti-abortion "terrorist" on the Ten Most Wanted List, chose to drop in on shortly before being arrested last November. It was Horsley who propelled his notorious website — featuring home addresses and other detailed information about hundreds of abortion providers — into the national limelight after a physician was murdered by a sniper in 1998."
"Even as some leaders of the anti-abortion movement hurried to distance themselves from the recent vicious attacks on doctors and clinics, the Florida-based Templar Knights of the Ku Klux Klan sponsored a rally on August 21 in support of Paul Hill, the man accused of shooting Dr. Britton and his escort, James Barrett."
Army of God fan site (among other things) for those who murder Doctors and others exercising their legal rights. (I don't recommend clicking on this link - lot of hate.)
History of the Army of God"The Army of God is an underground network of domestic terrorists who believe that the use of violence is appropriate and acceptable as a means to end abortion. The first public mention of the Army of God (AOG) is believed to have been when Don Benny Anderson used the AOG name in 1982 when he and Matthew and Wayne Moore kidnapped an Illinois abortion provider and his wife. The couple was later released unharmed and the trio were apprehended and convicted. Benny Anderson and the Moore brothers were also responsible for abortion clinic arsons. Many other threatening and violent incidents are attributed to the Army of God. A few examples are as follows: In 1984, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun received a death threat through the mail from the Army of God. Also in 1984, several abortion clinics as well as the offices of the National Abortion Federation and the American Civil Liberties Union were bombed. The name Army of God was found at one of the crime scenes. Michael Bray, Thomas Spinks, and Kenneth Shields were responsible for the crimes and spent time in prison."
And the most telling response of all...
Republicans Push to Legalize Anti-Abortion Terrorism
"During his 2004 campaign, Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn declared, "I favor the death penalty for abortionists." Four years later, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin famously refused to condemn an abortion clinic bomber as a "terrorist." Last week, a GOP mayoral candidate in Jacksonville joked that bombing an abortion clinic "may cross my mind." Now, deadly serious Republican lawmakers in Nebraska and Iowa are pushing legislation that would in essence legalize the murder of abortion providers.
Less than two years after the assassination of Dr. George Tiller and less than two weeks after South Dakota Republicans shelved a similar bill, Nebraska state Senator Mark Christensen has introduced an even more onerous version...
Meanwhile in Iowa, two new measures backed by House Republicans could together enable "the justifiable use of force against abortion or family planning providers." In violation of the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade ruling, House File 153 would ban abortion by mandating the state must protect "life" from the moment of conception. House File 7 would provide civil and criminal immunity for citizens using "reasonable force, including deadly force, to protect themselves or a third party from serious injury or death or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
Nevertheless, the Republican crusade against the reproductive rights of American women continues to gain momentum. While Republicans in Congress debate the redefinition of rape, defund Planned Parenthood and try to ban life-saving emergency room abortion procedures, emboldened GOP majorities in the states are putting draconian new abortion restrictions onto the books. Exceeding the harsh regulations in Mississippi, which now has one abortion clinic for the entire state, Virginia is set to pass a new law that would close at least 17 of its 21 clinics by forcing first-trimester abortion providers to offer the same medical facilities as hospitals. While Kentucky Republicans like their Texas counterparts are pushing a bill making it mandatory for patients to view an ultrasound image before undergoing an abortion procedure, several other states are planning to follow Nebraska's lead in passing so-called "fetal pain" laws. And while the Ohio GOP is pushing a "Heartbeat bill" would prohibiting women from ending their pregnancies after the "first discernible heartbeat," Georgia legislator Bobby Franklin seeks to prosecute - and execute - any woman who can't prove her miscarriage occurred naturally."
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