OpenForum – a blog by the Health and Human Rights community

Media coverage of Dr. George Tiller’s murder may have lessened since his fatal shooting on May 31^st, but the severe restrictions placed on women’s access to abortion services continue. A new report from the Center for Reproductive Rights describes the “unacceptable obstacles” that abortion providers face in providing reproductive rights, using testimony from both providers and women seeking abortions throughout the country. The reasons cited for limited access to abortion services include a shortage of providers due to the social and financial costs of performing abortions, intimidation and harassment of providers and women seeking abortions, and legal restrictions such as mandatory waiting periods and prohibitions on federal funds.

Constant harassment and intimidation at abortion clinics continue to limit the ability of abortion providers to do their jobs and of women to obtain abortions in a safe and respectful space. Laws such as the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) are meant to stop the often violent harassment that anti-abortion protesters use outside of abortion clinics. However, local and federal law enforcement can be lax in investigating threats: the report notes that the police often do not understand the provisions of FACE, or are unwilling to interfere with what they perceive as “the expected cost of providing abortion.”

Increasingly, anti-abortion groups are using litigation as a strategy to further harass abortion providers and burden law enforcement and the judicial system. For example, an anti-abortion group in Allentown, Pennsylvania sued the city after their protesters were arrested for “trespass, impeding access, racist and sexual taunting, and residential picketing” outside of a women’s clinic. The city eventually settled after a lengthy case, paying $10,000 to each of the 13 protestors. Experiences such as these have made law enforcement officials reluctant to interfere with protests outside clinics for fear of the legal repercussions. In this case, the Allentown City Solicitor told the clinic director that the city could no longer respond to any complaints at the clinic “unless there is a threat to life or person,” effectively admitting to the city’s almost complete inability to enforce the law with regards to abortion protestors. Read more