I did clinic defense for years. I was doing clinic defense during the time when Dr. David Gunn was assassinated though geographically I was nowhere near Florida.
For those of you who don't know: clinic defense is a simple concept: we were there to guide women into clinics when there were anti-abortion protesters outside. We weren't there to engage the protesters, counter-protest, or anything else. We were there to distract the women from the people yelling and shouting at them.
During the time I did this, the woman who owned the clinic was diagnosed with brain cancer. The cancer was terminal-- she died shortly after I'd stopped volunteering at the clinic. Before she died, the protesters outside would tease her about the cancer, telling her it was God's punishment for the children she murdered.
I also participated in pro-choice protests as well as gay rights protests from the mid-1980's through shortly after 2000. There are some very specific things I remember:
- At one point, we organized a counter protest at a pro-life rally. One of the people attending the rally walked up to a friend of mine and took a picture of him before yelling "now I've got your picture, so I can find you and kill you, you faggot!" This was done with police standing nearby. The police said it was just his freedom of speech and refused to take action;
- When I was a student, it was routine for people to tear down posters for the meetings of the gay rights group I'd formed. It didn't stop until I created progressively larger posters and kept replacing them with a bigger poster every time one was torn down;
- When a group of us from ACT-UP went to New Hampshire during the primaries in 2000, we got told by a Pat Buchannan supporter that someone ought to take an axe to us.
I don't really know what to say about this. I'm not trying to say anything insightful or creative. I'm just saying: this violence? Nothing new. Threats. Intimidation. Bigotry. Homophobia. Anti-abortion extremism?
There has always been a faction of this. It is dangerous. It is real. And we do not take it seriously enough to stop it. We can talk all we want about freedom of speech, and the right to protest, and I'm totally on board with that. People have the right to protest outside of clinics. But the threats, the violence, and their ties into groups like Operation Rescue? This is real, it is dangerous and it is deadly.
We're all ready to go after Fred Phelps and his group, which do nothing but try to provoke people and get attention: no threats, no violence, but just bitter, vicious speech. But the real dangers? They come from the people who advocate for picking up weapons, who use those weapons, who provide the funding for the violence done to others. I get why people go after Phelps because, honestly, it's kind of funny, but the real threats? We're not so invested in those.
When I did clinic defense, it wasn't "safe" work and it wasn't always easy. But it was important work to do, and it was worth doing. We weren't even supposed to use our real names, because of the dangers of being tracked down by the protesters. We knew what we were doing and why, and we knew the risks.
No one should have to put up with those risks to achieve their basic rights.
The speech? They have the right to protest outside. They have the right to make claims about abortion and show disgusting posters. It is horrible, it is wrong, and it is vile, but it is their right to do it, even if it, like Phelps' protests, causes emotional distress.
But the threats? The violence? The attempts to put clinics out of business through intimidation?
This needs to be stopped. Not responded to. Not addressed. Not dealt with, but stopped. This is terrorism, and it is real. It's happening today, and I think it's worse in some ways-- more and easier access to high-capacity weapons, fewer mental health resources, more mainstream representation of violent fringe groups.