As Anti-Abortion Violence Grows, Clinics Seek Federal Shield : Responding to demands for more protection, House and Senate each pass bills broadening government’s powers.

Kathleen is always there.

Every morning she waits for staff and patients outside the Fargo Women’s Health Organization in Fargo, N.D., the only abortion clinic in the state. When clinic administrator Jane Bovard drives into the parking lot, Kathleen stands next to her car.

Bovard said Kathleen, who will not disclose her last name, told her she is being paid to keep her vigil; she is loosely affiliated with an anti-abortion organization called “Focus on Fargo.”

Although Kathleen has never tried to harm anyone, at a time when violence is mounting against abortion clinics nationwide, her presence has begun to unnerve Bovard, who has taken to wearing a bulletproof vest.

Bovard and other clinic directors and abortion doctors, upset with local and state officials for refusing to do more to protect them, have taken their case to federal officials, arguing for greater federal protection and broader investigative powers of incidents of abortion-related violence. They contend that federal law enforcement agencies, most notably the FBI, should investigate actions that the providers contend are a conspiracy to wage domestic terrorism.

The House and Senate responded to their demands last week by approving separate measures that would grant wider investigative powers and impose federal fines and prison sentences for actions ranging from blockading clinics to making threats against or harming abortion providers. The two bills differ over the severity of punishment, however, and a House-Senate conference committee will go to work this week trying to reconcile the differences before Congress adjourns for the year.

Abortion clinic officials began their lobbying campaign this year as a wave of anti-abortion violence left one doctor dead, another wounded, and clinics from California to Pennsylvania smoking wrecks from arson and firebombings. Even peaceful demonstrations, like those outside the Fargo clinic, have taken on a more threatening tone in the view of doctors and inside the clinics.

“The violence has become rampant . . . we’ve had four clinics firebombed or torched, and no one is doing anything about it,” said Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, a lobbying group that represents doctors and clinics.

Abortion rights advocates have complained that the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies have been reluctant to mount a nationwide investigation of anti-abortion violence. Usually, incidents have been viewed as isolated crimes to be handled by local police.

The advocates insist that even without the new legislation, federal law enforcement agencies could claim jurisdiction to investigate the violence now if they chose to do so; that the FBI could contend the crimes were impeding interstate commerce, or the Justice Department could declare that the cases marked a form of domestic terrorism.

Instead, the main federal involvement has come from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which has authority to investigate cases of arson and firebombings. But the ATF has not been involved in tracking other forms of violence aimed at doctors or clinic staffers.

Anti-abortion activists charge that abortion rights forces are merely trying to maneuver federal law enforcement into taking sides in a political battle. “They are trying to distract attention away from the violence that is occurring inside the clinics,” said Wendy Wright, spokeswoman for Operation Rescue National.

“It is like Dr. Mengele praying for the Nazis to come and protect him,” said Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue. “These people are child killers. (Atty. Gen. Janet) Reno is an emissary of evil. But let them investigate us, we have nothing to hide. The Justice Department knows that there is no federal cause of action.”

Many federal law enforcement officials say they do not see any national conspiracy at work. ATF spokesman John Killorin said the agency has been investigating clinic bombings for 11 years and has solved 62 of 138 incidents. “We have found evidence of numerous conspiracies, but what we have not found is an underlying conspiracy responsible for all of the actions,” Killorin said.

Clearly, some on the fringe of the anti-abortion movement have given up on the strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience, which has been the hallmark of abortion groups like Operation Rescue. Splinter groups, frustrated by the failure of peaceful protest to bring about an end to abortion, have broken away.

There is no evidence linking any of the groups directly to the violence; law enforcement officials still believe the acts are the work of individual radicals. But some fringe groups, such as Advocates for Life and Defensive Action, are now openly encouraging violence.

Radical anti-abortion leaders from those groups and others have dubbed the killing of abortion doctors “justifiable homicide,” and their pamphlets now debate the merits of the use of force to stop what they believe is the killing of unborn children.

The violence and threats have proved effective.

The murder last March of Dr. David Gunn, an abortion doctor shot outside a Pensacola, Fla., clinic, and the August shooting of Dr. George Tiller outside a Wichita, Kan., clinic, prompted 10 to 15 abortion doctors to quit the business, Fitzsimmons said.

Many others are on the verge of quitting, and shortages of abortion doctors are developing as a result, he said.

“We are in a constant state of fear,” said Tom Tucker, an abortion doctor who works at clinics in Mississippi and Alabama. “We all have to wear bulletproof vests, and we carry guns. I’ve had to hire two bodyguards.”

The vandalism seems more thorough than before. The September firebombing of a clinic in Bakersfield, for example, burned the building to the ground and caused $1.4-million in damage, a new record for clinic vandalism, according to the National Abortion Federation. At least four clinics or offices around the nation have been attacked since Sept. 20.

A survey of clinic violence released this month by the Fund for the Feminist Majority, an abortion rights advocacy group, found that employees of 21% of the 281 clinics responding had received death threats during the first seven months of 1993, 18.1% had received bomb threats and clinic personnel had been “stalked” by anti-abortion activists at 15% of the clinics.

Clinic administrators and doctors have met with Reno and other Justice Department officials to try to persuade the Administration to step up the federal government’s involvement. Until recently, the FBI and Justice Department had deflected such demands by suggesting they wanted to wait for Congress to pass the anti-violence legislation--giving the FBI a much clearer mandate.

The Clinton Administration also wanted to wait until the Supreme Court rules in a case now pending that could determine whether federal anti-racketeering laws could be used to prosecute cases of anti-abortion violence.

Yet the Administration does seem ready to move on some levels, even though Congress has not completed action on the anti-abortion violence legislation. In an Oct. 29 meeting with abortion rights activists, Reno said she has designated Jim Reynolds, chief of the Justice Department’s domestic terrorism unit, to begin monitoring all anti-abortion violence nationwide. She also has ordered all U.S. attorneys and FBI offices around the country to forward information on all anti-abortion-related violence to Reynolds.

Clinic administrator Bovard calls such a coordinated federal approach the only solution. Anti-abortion activists frequently move from one state to another, making it difficult for local authorities to keep up with them.

One piece of videotape now haunts Bovard. After the attempt on Tiller’s life in Wichita, Bovard scanned back through tapes she had taken of protesters at her clinic. There was a woman she recognized, lying in a street to block a car from entering the Fargo clinic. It was Shelly Shannon, the Oregon mother and activist now awaiting trial in the Tiller shooting.

“It was very eerie to realize that she had been here,” Bovard says.