by Joyce Arthur

November 3, 1998

I have found myself becoming more and more pissed off and upset as the days go by since Dr. Barnett Slepian's murder (the abortion doctor murdered on Oct. 23). The problem is not just the violence, but the anti-choice response to it. They just don't get it!

For the first time, the message is getting through loud and clear to the public that anti-choice rhetoric is inextricably linked to the violence, and that one just feeds on the other. The increase in amount and severity of hate mail at clinics, the "anthrax" attacks, the serious death threat made against the Buffalo doctor, the bomb threat at the Birmingham clinic that was bombed in January -- these are all proof that violence encourages more of it, and gives people a licence to attack providers both verbally and physically. Yet at the same time, the anti-choice distance themselves from the violence, pretending that it's got nothing to do with them. While excusing themselves from blame, they continue to call abortion murder, and issue their revolting "Yes, but" condemnations of the violence. They insist on keeping their heads in the sand, while everyone else can see how obvious the connection really is.

When you are living in such an increasingly terrorist atmosphere, you naturally start to suspect that even the most peaceful anti-abortion protester is culpable and a tacit supporter of terrorism. The overall level of threat and fear is such that all anti-choice words and actions seem sinister and have become tainted with the threat of violence, no matter how innocent the intent. We have to assume that any one of them could have a gun in their pocket! That changes everything. It poisons the anti's own right to dissent. It makes all their protestations and arguments seem hollow, inhuman, hypocritical, and cruelly cavalier in the face of our grief and anger. But they are blind to the effect of their actions -- they continue to trot out the same old rhetoric and it doesn't even occur to them that they should take responsibility for the violence caused by their own words.

I used to have the occasional brief debate with anti's on the Internet (until I realized they are incapable of listening), but I find I can no longer stomach even reading what they have to say, let alone responding to it. For me, because of the violence, I now sense real evil emanating from their smug self-righteousness, an evil that is frightening in its degree of ignorant intolerance. They don't deserve to be listened to when they're tacitly condoning the violence, but they can't understand that. They seem to think nothing has changed, and that we should continue to debate with them on the morality of abortion. But now I recoil in horror from their words, and cannot in good conscience have any kind of a dialogue with a movement that has been completely contaminated with terrorism and violence, and with an ever-increasing indifference and lack of compassion towards women and children.

I wonder what Dr. Slepian's murder and the anti-choice reaction to it will mean for the future? I think there are strong indications that public sentiment is turning against the anti-abortion movement like never before. But at the same time, the violent zealots in the movement are not just going to disappear into the woodwork. They will stop at nothing to force women back to mandatory motherhood and the horrors of illegal abortion.