Violence against Abortion Providers (birth control)

Barnett Slepian, M.D., Buffalo, New York, obstetrician, gynecologist, and abortion provider, was assassinated in his Amherst, New York, home on October 23, 1998. Slepian, fifty-two, had returned from a synagogue service honoring his late father, and was relaxing in his kitchen with his wife and four sons, when a sniper’s round smashed through a kitchen window and struck him in the back. The bullet pierced his heart, killing him in minutes. An outspoken pro-choice activist and frequent target of antiabortion protesters, Slepian was the second U.S. abortion physician killed by a sniper, the first being David Gunn in Pensacola, Florida, in 1993. The killing heightened awareness of antiabortion terrorism and was widely condemned. But not everyone was critical; Reverend Donald Spitz, founder of Pro-Life Virginia, celebrated the assassination and praised the killer for ending Slepian’s “bloodthirsty practice.”

Slepian was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and grew up in Rochester, New York. He attended medical school at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, Mexico, graduating in 1978. During his Buffalo residency he met and married nurse Lynne Breit-bart. They had four sons. Slepian established a successful obstetrical/gynecological practice in Buffalo and was widely recognized for providing skilled, compassionate obstetrical care. He also performed abortions at two Buffalo clinics, which made him a target of vociferous protests. He was often harassed in public and reportedly received two hundred death threats. In one 1988 incident, Slepian lashed out at protesters picketing his home during Hanukkah, damaging a protester’s van with a baseball bat. In 1994 he wrote an eerily prescient letter to the editor of the local newspaper predicting that escalating antiabortion rhetoric in the area might lead to the shooting of an abortion provider. After Slepian’s death, the family established a memorial fund to support training of medical students in abortion techniques and reproductive health care.

James Charles Kopp was on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's top-ten wanted criminal list for allegedly shooting Barnett Slepian to death in his New York home. Kopp was arrested in France on March 29, 2001.

James Charles Kopp was on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s top-ten wanted criminal list for allegedly shooting Barnett Slepian to death in his New York home. Kopp was arrested in France on March 29, 2001.

The assailant eventually charged in the murder was James Charles Kopp of St. Albans, Vermont, born in 1954. A devout Roman Catholic, Kopp was a longtime antiabortion activist associated with the most radical and violent wing of the pro-life movement. Canadian authorities also charged Kopp in the nonfatal shootings of three abortion doctors in that country; like the Slepian murder, these attacks occurred in the fall, close to the Canadian veterans’ holiday Remembrance Day, which has been adopted as a focus of antiabortion activism. He was one of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and was also sought by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police until his arrest in France in 2001. Rewards offered for his arrest and conviction total more than one million dollars.

Slepian is the latest in a line of abortion doctors and others targeted by antiabortion radicals. As the antiabortion movement has failed to eliminate abortion through legal or political means, its radical wing has opted increasingly for the use of force. Abortion physicians who were killed and wounded before Slepian’s murder include Jack Fainman (Winnipeg, Manitoba, November 1997), shot and wounded at home, allegedly by James Kopp; an unnamed doctor (Perinton, New York, October 1997), shot and wounded at home by an unknown assailant; Calvin Jackson (New Orleans, December 1996), stabbed outside his clinic by a pro-life activist; Hugh Short (Ancaster, Ontario, November 1995), shot and wounded at home, allegedly by James Kopp; George Klopfer (Indiana, 1995), shot by an unknown assailant while driving his car; and Garson Romalis (Vancouver, British Columbia, November 1994), severely wounded at home, allegedly by James Kopp. In July 1994, pro-life activist Paul Hill shot and killed John Bayard Britton outside a Pensacola, Florida, clinic, also killing volunteer escort James Barrett and wounding Barrett’s wife. Hill gave himself up on the scene and was convicted of murder. Also in 1994, Paul Hackmeyer was shot in the chest in an ambush outside his home; he survived the attack. In August 1993, George Patterson, who had performed abortions at the Florida clinic where Dr. Britton died, was found shot to death in Mobile, Alabama; it is unclear whether this attack was a robbery or was related to Patterson’s abortion practice. In August 1993, George Tiller, a Wichita, Kansas, provider known for providing therapeutic third-trimester abortions, was shot in both arms outside his clinic by Rachelle (“Shelley”) Shannon, a member of the antiabortion extremist group Army of God. Tiller returned to work next day; Shannon was jailed. In March 1993, David Gunn was shot in the back and killed outside the same Pensaco-la, Florida, clinic where Dr. Britton and his escort would die sixteen months later. The assailant, pro-life activist Michael Griffin, surrendered on site and was convicted of murder. In late 1992, Douglas Karpen was nonfatally shot by an unknown assailant in a parking garage near his clinic, an attack that was not recognized as abortion-related until several years later. The first incident of violence against an abortion doctor may be the 1982 abduction of an Illinois physician and his wife by Don Benny Anderson, alleged founder of the Army of God. Anderson held his captives at gunpoint in a bunker for eight days before releasing them unharmed. Anderson remains jailed.

Violence against abortion doctors is part of a larger pattern: since 1977, U.S. abortion clinics have been the targets of 154 arsons, 39 bombings, and 99 acid attacks. Since 1991, there have been fifteen attempted murders of abortion clinic personnel, from doctors to support staff. At least seven clinic personnel died between 1993 and 1998. Though roundly condemned by most in the pro-life movement, the campaign of violence is succeeding in doing what pickets and clinic blockades could not: reducing American women’s access to abortion services. As a result in part to rising fears of violence, the number of abortion doctors has plunged about 15 percent since 1980—in rural areas, 55 percent. In 84 percent of the nation’s counties there are no abortion doctors. Pro-choice activists and medical educators have begun modifying medical school curricula, establishing scholarship funds, and forming activist organizations such as Medical Students for Choice to help ensure that tomorrow’s doctors will acquire the knowledge and the determination to keep safe, legal abortion available for women who choose it.

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