Abortion Providers Periled by Web Site, Court Is Told

Abortion providers listed as “baby butchers” on a Web site that reads like a wanted poster live in constant fear for their lives, attorneys said Thursday in a federal court case accusing the site of being an invitation to murder.

“Just like bounty hunters of the Old West, the defendants want to stop the doctors by any means--dead in their tracks,” said Maria Vullo, who represents a group of doctors listed on the site, which is called the Nuremberg Files.

The site lists hundreds of doctors who perform abortions, their addresses, their license numbers, even the names of their children. Those killed are crossed off, and those wounded are shaded in gray.

Lawyers for the defendants maintained the site stops short of making outright threats and is merely a form of political protest protected by the Constitution.

“This is a case about the threat to kill or injure, which is simply not there,” said attorney Chris Ferrara. “Opinions? Yes, sometimes harsh. But no violence.”

The defendants include the American Coalition of Life Advocates, an umbrella group for several anti-abortion groups nationwide, and Advocates for Life Ministries, a radical Portland-based group.

Plaintiffs, including Planned Parenthood and a women’s health center, argue that the site violates a federal law that bars activists from inciting violence against abortion providers and patients.

Vullo noted that the site and a set of “wanted posters” distributed by the site’s backers stop short of making explicit threats, but she said the message was clear in a pattern of “posters and murders and murders and applause.”

The site drew attention in October, when the name of Dr. Barnett Slepian was crossed off the list shortly after a sniper killed him at his suburban Buffalo, N.Y., home.

“The defendants have just gone too far, beyond the realm of protected speech,” Vullo said.