How Anyone Who Works At An Abortion Clinic Becomes A Target For Violence And Harassment

[Panich52]

ThinkProgress

Joan, the president of a network of women’s health clinics in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States, isn’t comfortable using her real name in this story because her private residence was vandalized last year. Someone threw a bucket of red paint all over her house.

. ...

... she was pretty sure it was anti-abortion harassment. There wasn’t much the cops could do.

Ascribing blame to the anti-abortion movement — whose particularly far-right actors regularly picket at abortion providers’ private homes, and occasionally use sidewalk chalk to scrawl messages declaring them to be “serial killers” and “monsters” — wasn’t totally a shot in the dark. Protesters clearly know where Joan lives because they’ve shown up at her house several times before. One year, they rewrote Christmas carols to feature lyrics about “how horrible I am,” according to Joan.

“I don’t feel particularly paranoid,” said Joan. When she started her current position, she was given a bulletproof vest by her organization’s security director, but it’s been sitting untouched in a drawer ever since. However, she acknowledged that the risks associated with her line of work do have some impact: “When someone knocks on my door at night, I wonder why.”

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http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/04/27/3650625/targeted-harassment-abortion-providers/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tptop3&elqTrack=true&elqTrackId=bd3d8800ab2f47ac8a5faa5878c35ebf&elqaid=25381&elqat=1


x p Women's issues

[CTyankee]

1. Oh, no! Not again.

I worked for a clinic that provided abortions back in the late 80s and early 90s when protesters closed clinics and even invaded them. It was a constant threat but I was in a very liberal city and we had clinic protectors (many from Yale) who came to form a human chain around ours to prevent invasion. Once the would-be invaders saw that, they turned and went away. We also had police cooperation.

[dembotoz]

2. got a death threat yesterday... not abortion related... but the thugs seem to be ramping up

Be safe
And keep fighting