Anti-abortion violence
[1][4] Incidents include vandalism, arson, and bombings of abortion clinics, such as those committed by Eric Rudolph (1996–98), and murders or attempted murders of physicians and clinic staff, as committed by James Kopp (1998), Paul Jennings Hill (1994), Scott Roeder (2009), Michael F. Griffin (1993), and Peter James Knight (2001).
Those who engage in or support such actions defend the use of force with claims of justifiable homicide or defense of others in the interest of protecting the life of the fetus.
[13] The Federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act was passed in 1994 to protect reproductive health service facilities and their staff and patients from violent threats, assault, vandalism, and blockade.
248) also provides the same level of legal protection to all pregnancy-related medical clinics, including anti-abortion counseling centers; it also applies to use of threatening tactics directed towards churches and places of worship.
[I 38] Incidents have included: The first hoax letters claiming to contain anthrax were mailed to U.S. clinics in October 1998, a few days after the shooting of Barnett Slepian; since then, there have been 655 such bioterror threats made against abortion providers.
While sharing a common ideology and tactics, members claim to rarely communicate;[76] to avoid risk of information leaking to outside sources.
In August 1982, three men identifying as the Army of God kidnapped Hector Zevallos (a doctor and clinic owner) and his wife, Rosalee Jean, holding them for eight days and released them unharmed.
[77] Law enforcement officials found the Army of God Manual, a tactical guide to arson, chemical attacks, invasions, and bombings buried in Shelly Shannon's backyard.
[78][I 5] The AOG claimed responsibility for Eric Robert Rudolph's 1997 shrapnel bombing of abortion clinics in Atlanta and Birmingham.
[80] In the late 1990s, an organization called American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA) was accused of implicitly advocating violence by its publication on its "Nuremberg Files" website of wanted-style posters, which featured a photograph of a physician who performed abortions along with a monetary reward for any information that would lead to his "arrest, conviction, and revocation of license to practice medicine".
The site was accused of being a thinly-veiled hit list intended to incite violence; others claimed that it was protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
[85][86] In a 2009 press release, Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry issued a statement calling for peaceful protests to expose abortion providers.
According to Media Matters and The Colorado Independent, however, Terry has also led apparently contradictory public prayers that an abortion provider would "[convert] to God" or that "calamity [would] strike him".
[88] Flip Benham, director of Operation Rescue, accused "those in the abortion-providing industry" of committing most of the violence in an attempt to discredit the antiabortion movement.
