Harassment of Abortion Clinics Growing

According to polls, most Americans support the legal right of women to choose abortion and deplore the harassment and violence that has been directed at abortion clinics and their patients. Nevertheless, a recent national survey of abortion providers has found that anti-abortion activities in the United States are widespread and frequent, take many forms, and have increased in the mid-1980s.

According to the survey conducted by the New York-based Alan Guttmacher Institute and covering almost two-thirds of the abortion providers in the country, 47% of all abortion facilities experienced harassment in 1985.

Among non-hospital facilities that perform a large number of abortions--400 or more a year--88% reported at least one type of harassment and 73% reported illegal anti-abortion harassment. This means that a woman who goes to obtain an abortion in the United States is very vulnerable to threats and harassment: These non-hospital clinics and private doctors’ offices perform three-fourths of all abortions.

The clinics were asked to report on 12 different forms of harassment, half of them illegal. Forty-eight percent of them reported bomb threats, 47% reported patients had been physically blocked by picketers, 29% said anti-abortion activists had invaded their facilities, 22% experienced jamming of telephone lines, 28% reported vandalism, and 19% said staff members had received death threats.

These activities are illegal under federal law, and a total of almost three-fourths of the clinics reported being the target of at least one of these.

Other forms of harassment the clinics were asked about are legal under federal law (but not in all states). These included picketing, the most common form of anti-abortion activity. Eighty percent of the clinics reported they had been picketed, 46% reported that they were harassed by mass schedulings of fake appointments over the telephone, 42% had experienced demonstrations loud enough to be heard in patient areas, 16% said the homes of clinic staff members had been picketed. And 16% said their patients had been harassed by anti-abortion people who traced them by their license plates and called or visited them at their homes.

The survey did not deal with the effects of these activities on patients, although it is obvious that being harangued or tracked down at home over what is generally a distressing and personal procedure would be upsetting for abortion patients.

The Guttmacher report, published in the January/February, 1987, issue of its professional journal, Family Planning Perspectives, also pointed out that “undoubtedly” many women who consider abortion may be put off by frightening stories of harassment at clinics.

In addition, harassment threatens what is already an insufficient number of abortion providers, the report said. According to a study in 1981 and 1982 conducted by the institute, 28% of women of childbearing age live in counties where there is no abortion provider and more than 100,000 women who had abortions went to another state to do so.

The questionnaire sent to hospitals asked some different questions than the one sent to clinics. It asked whether the hospital had been subjected to outside pressure to restrict or eliminate abortion services. Thirty-six percent said they had, and most of these said the pressure had increased in 1984 and 1985.

Non-hospital facilities providing small numbers of abortions--mostly private physicians performing abortions in their offices--also reported harassment, but at much lower levels than the large clinics. Just less than one-third reported having experienced at least one form of harassment, most commonly picketing.

The report did not cover abortion facilities that may have discontinued services due to harassment, but it found that anti-abortion activities affect clinic expenses and may ultimately affect the availability of abortion.

Non-hospital clinics offering large numbers of abortions reported that they had not raised fees to patients (the cost of a first-trimester abortion has declined since 1983), but that they had experienced numerous costly problems as a result of the actions of anti-abortion forces.

Of those clinics that had experienced harassment beyond peaceful picketing, 52% reported higher security costs (not counting security personnel) and 49% had higher legal costs, 37% increased security personnel, 24% lost fire and casualty insurance, and 28% reported difficulty hiring staff.

Those experiencing the most serious problems--such as physical blocking by picketers, bomb threats, tracing of license plates--as would be expected, had the most difficulty hiring staff; of those that reported peaceful picketers only, just 7% said staffing was a problem.

While opposition to clinics has had no effect on the incidence or the costs of abortions to date, “it remains to be seen whether the problem of obtaining insurance and other external pressures . . . will force providers to increase their charges in the future,” the report concluded.