The Guardian
‘People want me dead’: abortion providers fear violence after Roe overturned
Danger is a daily reality for the health workers, and moments of upheaval raise the risk, expert says
July 3, 2022
“Boulder, Colorado, has for decades made its abortion providers feel welcome. The city council passed one of the country’s first laws regulating how close demonstrators could get to patients seeking reproductive care, and residents took to the streets in protest when it became clear that the supreme court was ready to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, as it did last month.
“Boulder is probably the most pro-choice community in the country,” said Warren Hern, director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic. “But there are people in the community who want me dead….
Such violent attacks have “been successful insofar as it’s made people less interested in going to abortion clinics and less interested in going to abortion providers,” Ziegler said.
They’ve also transformed life for abortion providers, who have taken to wearing bulletproof vests in public and outfitting their clinics with security doors and bullet-resistant glass.
But Ziegler said the attacks were often counterproductive because they swayed public opinion against anti-abortion groups and reminded Americans of the links between the anti-abortion movement and white supremacists.
“People in the United States thought more negatively of the anti-abortion movement as being a kind of misogynist white supremacist movement. Being a violent movement makes a lot of people reluctant to associate with you,” Ziegler said.
When insurrectionists attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, “a lot of our providers recognized people. They are people who have been outside their clinics,” said Melissa Fowler, chief program officer at the National Abortion Federation, which monitors violence against clinics.
Its data, which encompasses the US, Canada, Mexico City and Colombia, shows an increase in violence and harassment towards abortion providers. Every type of incident the organization tracks in its annual report rose last year compared with 2020, including stalking of clinic staff, which in the US jumped 200% from the year prior, with 12 incidents reported.”
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The Guardian
‘People want me dead’: abortion providers fear violence after Roe overturned
Danger is a daily reality for the health workers, and moments of upheaval raise the risk, expert says
July 3, 2022
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