Ever since clinics began to provide the safe and legal abortions made possible by Roe v. Wade in 1973, they have been targets for harassment by anti-choice organizations and individuals. The onslaught has been characterized by steadily escalating violence, with the worst sieges occurring in 1984, 1992-94, and 1997-98. Between 1977 and the end of February 2001, more than 4,200 bombings, arsons, blockades, episodes of vandalism, stalkings, assaults, and other acts of violence took place at clinics throughout the country. Stymied in their efforts to make abortion illegal again, some anti-choice extremists resorted to murder as the ultimate weapon in the "war" they claim to be waging. The violence is exacerbating the already critical shortage of physicians willing to provide abortions and otherwise compromising the right of women to obtain abortion care.
As the nation's principal defender of the Constitution, the ACLU is committed to protecting a woman's right to choose. We deplore the orchestrated campaign of violence and threats designed to intimidate doctors, health care workers, and women who try to exercise their constitutional right to reproductive freedom. The violence directed against abortion providers today is analogous to white supremacists' attacks on African-Americans and civil rights advocates in the 1960's South, aimed at preventing blacks from exercising their right to vote.
Anti-choice activists, like those espousing any cause, are properly protected by the First Amendment when they speak, march, demonstrate, pray, display images, or associate with others in these activities. Their expression may be harsh, unsettling, and offensive and still be protected by the First Amendment.
But protesters may not physically obstruct others from exercising their rights, threaten doctors' lives in an effort to scare them away from abortion practice, nor break the bounds of peaceful expression and assembly. The First Amendment does not protect people when they turn to shooting doctors, kidnapping clinic staff, destroying medical equipment, planting bombs, setting fire to clinics, threatening violence, or blockading clinic entrances. The Constitution does not -- and never has -- provided immunity to vigilantes.
The ACLU is actively engaged in efforts to protect abortion providers and patients from such illegal conduct. Our activities include the following, among others:
The high incidence of anti-choice violence has terrorized abortion providers and made access to abortion services increasingly difficult in the last decade. No health care worker should have to risk threats, assaults, and even murder for providing a legal medical procedure. No woman should have to risk being assaulted and abused for exercising her constitutional right to choose.