Law Protecting Abortion Clinics Thwarts Protests

Fifteen years of volatile and sometimes violent protests at abortion clinics have quietly come to a close, snuffed out in large part by a federal law designed to protect people inside and around women’s health centers.

The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, passed after a series of slayings by antiabortion protesters, makes it a federal crime to harm, threaten or harass anyone entering or leaving a clinic.

It also has had the surprising effect of helping to all but shut down many of the large volunteer demonstrations that drew thousands of antiabortion protesters and widespread public attention to the front doors of clinics around the nation.

Not only have large groups like Operation Rescue been dispirited and dispersed, their leaders today find it increasingly difficult to recruit volunteers willing to risk violating federal law.

According to federal authorities and clinic operators, the number of violent incidents reported at women’s clinics--including assaults, arsons and bomb threats--has declined nearly 87% since the law was enacted in 1994.

The Supreme Court has three times refused to consider legal challenges to the law. The most recent rejection came last week, when the high court declined to hear the appeal of a woman who was convicted of blocking a Milwaukee abortion clinic shortly after the law went into effect.

In fact, leaders on both sides of the abortion debate--who normally are unwilling to concede the other side is right about anything--generally agree that the law has had a sweeping impact.

“In 1995, we were probably dealing with a major incident every week,” said Susan Lamontagne, vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in New York. “A clinic being bombed. A death threat. Somebody having a bullet shot through their window. That kind of thing.

“This year, a lot of that is gone.”

Jeff White, a key leader in the Operation Rescue antiabortion movement in California, says his group has disbanded. Fresh recruits are increasingly hard to come by.

Comparing his rallies to the civil rights marches of 30 years ago, White says the United States would be a lot different today if similar legislation had been written and enforced against those protesters.

“If the same things had been done to the civil rights movement of the 1960s,” he said, “there’d still be separate drinking fountains in the South.”

The FACE law, as it is commonly known, is not the only factor that closed the door on abortion protests, particularly those of the late 1980s that drew hundreds of volunteers to cities like Los Angeles and San Diego.

Murders around clinics in Florida and Kansas came first. There also were numerous reports of broken wrists suffered by some protesters, many of them arrested by police officers in Los Angeles and elsewhere who were given permission to use special pain compliance techniques.

It was the murders that ultimately gave Congress the impetus to pass the FACE law, after the bill had been languishing for some time on Capitol Hill. It carries a punishment of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

From 1977 to 1993, the year the law was passed by Congress, more than 1,000 acts of violence--including bombings, kidnappings and arsons--were reported against abortion providers in the United States. In addition, more than 6,000 clinic blockades and other disruptions were carried out, many on a grandiose scale that captured the nation’s attention.

Retiring Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.), a key supporter of the bill, was mindful of the so-called Summer of Mercy in 1991, when abortion opponents launched a lengthy blockade in Wichita, Kan.

“The protest created a climate of intolerance and anger which permeated Wichita,” she said. “The physical obstruction, violence and destruction of property being described cannot be tolerated.”

Today, many organizations report sharp declines in problems at their clinics. Death threats at Planned Parenthood clinics have dropped from 14 in 1995 to three this year; bomb threats are down from 15 to seven; the number of protesters is down from 4,034 to 1,357, and the amount of damage is down from $15,581 to $8,130.

“My phone rings considerably less frequently now than it did two or three years ago,” said Roger Evans, director of litigation for Planned Parenthood.

Evans has sought civil remedies against protesters in federal court under the FACE law, using a provision that allows clinics to seek monetary damages against violators.

He is suing 28 people, seeking to make them pay Planned Parenthood $500 each for a January 1995 protest in Philadelphia that marked the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade ruling legalizing abortion.

The law has been used to stop protesters on several other fronts:

* In June 1994, just one month after the law was enacted, Marilyn R. Hatch of Seattle and five other protesters were arrested for blockading a clinic in Milwaukee. She was later convicted in federal court and drew 30 days in jail and a $500 fine. The Supreme Court has refused to consider her appeal.

* In March 1995, federal prosecutors obtained the first permanent injunction under the FACE law against a Kansas City woman, Regina R. Dinwiddie. A federal appeals court later upheld the decision. Dinwiddie was convicted despite her contention she was not harassing women on their way to a local health center. “I always walk them to the place,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I’m stalking them.”

* In March of this year, a Wisconsin man was found guilty of soliciting others to violate the FACE law and of funding antiabortion violence by stealing an armored car containing $250,000. The conviction basically silenced abortion foe Robert E. Cook of Kenosha, Wis., who once vowed to an undercover FBI agent that his intentions were to “kill the baby-killers.”

Although these and other convictions have been significant, a closer look at two other cases highlights the ground-level impact of the law at the clinic door.

White, the Operation Rescue director in California, once commanded a force of 40,000. Now, he says, “as an entity we’re basically defunct.”

Not only did his group disband, he found himself in the middle of his own FACE law violation in February when a federal court imposed a permanent injunction against him and two others for harassing a doctor and his family near Crestline, just north of San Bernardino.

After county officials declined to prosecute him for picketing near the doctor’s home, federal officials took up the case.

“They have an inexhaustible money supply. I don’t. I’m broke. So I signed the injunction.”

In Florida, Patrica Baird-Windle was running three clinics: in Melbourne, West Palm Beach and Port St. Lucie. She lost the Port St. Lucie clinic after repeated protests there. But once the law was activated, demonstrations began to dwindle at the other two locations.

“I used to have maybe 60 hard-core people coming out to my clinics every week,” she said. “This is an area heavy in Catholics and evangelicals, and they were active. This is also a major media market, so they knew they could get national attention.

“But since the FACE law, there are only maybe 12 hard-core people left. So yes, this law has brought about some definite changes.”

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Protests on the Wane

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1995 1996 Death threats 14 3 Bomb threats 15 7 Invasions 7 1 Vandalism 57 40 Picketing 2,271 2,188 # of protestors 4,034 1,357 Damage $15,581 $8,130

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Source: Clinic Defense and Reseach / Planned Parenthood Federation of America