Southland Abortion Clinics Add Security After Incidents

Southern California abortion rights activists said Thursday they were tightening security at local abortion clinics and renewing political efforts to protect access to clinics after Wednesday’s fatal shooting of a doctor outside a Florida abortion clinic.

The Florida attack came on the heels of attacks on six Southern California abortion clinics and reports of harassment against physicians who perform abortions.

“This is not an isolated incident,” said Kate Harris of the California Abortion Rights Action League. “This is a deliberate attempt to prevent women from exercising their legal rights and prevent physicians from performing their duties.”

The murder of Dr. David Gunn in the parking lot of a Pensacola, Fla., abortion clinic was the first fatality ever reported at an abortion protest.

“In the health care community, there is a sense of horror that this has happened,” said Sima Michaels, associate director of the Los Angeles Regional Family Planning Council, which allocates funds to 23 family planning agencies. “We are extremely concerned that health providers are so vulnerable. This fight should be fought at the government level. It’s horrendous that it’s been brought to this personal level.”

Dr. Joan Babbott, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles, said security measures have been enhanced at all nine of its facilities, although she declined to disclose details. “We are very much saddened by what happened to Dr. Gunn,” she said. “We are also angry and concerned and ever more alert about issues of security. Our clinics will be open as usual.”

Local anti-abortionists have condemned the killing, although some national groups--including Rescue America, the group holding the demonstration outside the Pensacola clinic--is raising money for the family of the suspect, 31-year-old Michael Frederick Griffin.

“While Americans will differ on many issues, this kind of unconscionable action is totally condemned,” said Susan Carpenter-McMillan of the Pasadena-based Pro Family Media Coalition.

Katherine Spillar, executive director of the Fund for the Feminist Majority, argued that the Florida killing was part of a “pattern of escalating violence nationwide.”

“What we have seen since the election is a real change in the tactics,” she said. “We know in Orange County, clinic workers are being followed home. There’s been escalated activity against doctors in the South Bay and on the Westside, where they have picketed doctors’ neighborhoods. . . . This is harassment. It’s intimidation. It’s domestic terrorism.”

State Sen. Chuck Calderon (D-Montebello) said Thursday he will introduce a bill in this legislative session that would prohibit picketing in all residential areas.

Abortion rights activists are lobbying for the “Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act,” which would make it a federal criminal offense to prevent anyone from obtaining services at a family planning clinic. The bill was introduced in Congress earlier this year.

Dr. James McMahon, a Southern California physician who performs therapeutic abortions, said that, despite concern over the Florida shooting, he wasn’t taking extra precautions because he didn’t think it would do any good.

“I’m just helping my patients one at a time. I can’t see what I can do,” said McMahon, who primarily performs abortions in cases of serious fetal flaws or in which the mother’s health is endangered by a pregnancy.

Although McMahon has been performing abortions since 1977, his clinic had escaped the attention of anti-abortion activists until early this year, when they started picketing his office. Protesters have also called the office and written him a letter, which he responded to by quoting from the Bible. But McMahon said he has no intention of changing his line of work.

“I’m sure there’s someone out there who would think that killing me is God’s will,” McMahon said. “Once you’re an absolutist, there’s no limit to what you would do.”

Earlier this week, six clinics in San Diego and one in Riverside were hit with noxious bombs of butyric acid--an obnoxious-smelling, combustible chemical capable of causing skin and tissue irritation.

Sherry Lynn Sweeney, site manager of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Riverside, said that although the clinic was closed Wednesday and Thursday, health care workers were dispensing birth control and seeing patients on the sidewalk. They hope to open the facility today, she said.

A cleaning woman who was the first to enter the building early Wednesday was in the hospital Thursday, her face peeling from chemical exposure. “She has nothing to do with Planned Parenthood. She’s a person making a living cleaning offices,” Sweeney said.

Four employees at a private doctors office in San Diego were hospitalized, said Ashley Phillips, executive director of Womancare Clinic, a family planning facility that was also targeted by a butyric acid bomb.

She said that although both the Florida incident and the local incidents “strengthen our conviction, I would be remiss if I didn’t add the fact that we are feeling some stress. These incidents act as a reminder that we need to be ever-vigilant about our personal safety.”