Anti-choice terrorism
CANADA — Since February 1998, there has been a campaign of intimidation against abortion providers in British Columbia (BC). Local health care workers have received letters asking them to identify physicians who provide abortions.
The first letter was mailed to 144 health care workers in February. It asked those receiving it to name any doctors they were aware of who provide abortions. It also asked for the names of physicians who do not perform abortions, but simply refer women to doctors who do.
The letter stated that the information would be widely publicised, but that informants would remain anonymous. It was signed by Kelowna Right To Life, an affiliate of the BC Pro-Life Society.
Soon after, a nearly identical letter surfaced in Vancouver. It was signed by prominent local "anti" Sissy von Dehn, supposedly on behalf of a group of "pro-life nurses". Since then, at least four more letters have been detected, some mailed from Texas in the US and Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
The first two letters seem to have been copied word-for-word from originals supplied by a Texas anti-abortion group, Life Dynamics Inc., headed by Mark Crutcher.
According to one prominent US "anti", "LDI excels in developing a sophisticated and innovative intelligence-gathering operation, using a combination of ordinary pro-lifers, infiltrators, covert actions and state-of-the-art electronic surveillance equipment'. LDI also offers the services of 8000 "Spies for Life".
Crutcher's methods have included mailing out a bogus "pro-choice" questionnaire to hundreds of US providers. The supposedly anonymous return envelopes had been coded with ultraviolet-sensitive ink so that each reply could be matched to the doctor.
In 1995, three of Crutcher's employees were arrested at a clinic in New Jersey. Two presented themselves as a pregnant young woman and her aunt. They were wired with a video camera, while a third LDI staffer taped their counselling session via radio microphone.
LDI has issued calls for supporters to send it home addresses and phone numbers of providers, photos and licence plate numbers. This has led to serious concerns by providers that LDI is covertly working with the pro-murder wing of the anti-abortion movement.
These fears are magnified by the close links LDI appears to have with the American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA), most of whose leaders have publicly called for the murder of doctors and clinic staff. In May 1995, Crutcher gave a half-day seminar to a national conference of ACLA in Wichita, Kansas.
On November 8, 1994, Dr Garson Romalis was shot in Vancouver. Since then, two other Canadian physicians have been wounded in similar assassination attempts. No one has been arrested.
Psychological terrorism, like these letters, has its greatest impact when there is real terrorism in the air. These letters have to be seen as a conscious and systematic attempt to terrorise BC providers into ceasing to perform abortions.
When three doctors have been shot here and when six providers have been murdered in the US, the threat of publicising one's name, address and picture is not a matter of minor harassment. At least one well-publicised anti-abortion web site in the US compiles this information on the Internet.
There is a tacit division of labour here, where the mainstream anti-abortion groups continue to denounce the shootings, on paper, while adapting their tactics to profit from the fear and terror engendered by the violence.
Significantly, both of the mainstream anti-choice organisations in BC have publicly endorsed the letters, and none of the mainstream anti-abortion groups nationally have condemned this intimidation. Most notably, the Catholic Church has maintained complete silence.
The letters are a clever tactic. They are genuinely intimidating, as intended. They carry a threat, but of an implied rather than explicit nature. This means that the writers will probably continue to escape criminal charges.