Execution of anti-abortionist creates fear of backlash

PENSACOLA, Fla. – (KRT) – Many residents of this seaside Florida Panhandle city – the epicenter of the mid-`90s anti-abortion violence – say they’ll feel a sense of justice next week when Florida prison officials execute Paul Hill.

A devout anti-abortionist, Hill is scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday for the 1994 shotgun slayings of Dr. John Britton and his volunteer escort, retired Air Force Lt. Col. James Barrett, outside a women’s clinic here.

But others on both sides of the abortion debate, as well as law-enforcement officials, are voicing fears that Hill’s execution may have an unwanted side effect: It could turn Hill, 49, into a martyr for hard-line anti-abortionists and reawaken a violent wing of the movement that federal agents had all but crippled for the last five years.

Anti-abortion Web sites such as The Christian Gallery, which flashes pictures of mutilated babies and calls clinics “abortion mills,” have been carrying news of Hill’s so-called murder ceremony and beckon followers to Starke, Fla., where Hill sits on Death Row.

Another Web site, run by anti-abortionist Rev. David Trosch, of Mobile, Ala., says “justifiable homicide killings are legal in all states,” and posts links to addresses and phone numbers for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who signed Hill’s death warrant in July.

Threatening letters – each containing a single live rifle bullet – were recently mailed to Florida’s attorney general, prison warden, corrections secretary and the Pensacola judge who sentenced Hill to die, prompting an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI.

“We are very concerned about a backlash,” said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation.

“Hill himself has said that his execution will incite more violence. He’s said he’s a dangerous man but will be more dangerous dead.”

Mainstream anti-abortion leaders have distanced themselves from Hill and his supporters, saying last decade’s violence seriously hurt the movement.

They say activists endorsing violence represent only a small and increasingly ineffective minority, doing little more than chattering up Web sites. The last time an abortion physician was shot, they point out, was nearly five years ago, when Dr. Barnett Slepian was shot and killed in the kitchen of his suburban Buffalo home by a single sniper bullet.

“Most of them are just big talkers,” said Joseph Scheidler, national director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League, who has met with Hill and other extremists. “Paul Hill hurt our cause quite a bit. People started calling us murderers.”

In fact, the number of violent acts – murders, bombings, arsons and kidnappings – against abortion providers dropped from 27 in 1994 to just one last year, according to National Abortion Federation statistics. New provisions, such as the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which makes blocking access to an abortion clinic a federal crime, have helped deter violent acts against clinics and doctors, officials said.

But FBI officials point out that this is the first time an anti-abortion extremist will be executed for his actions.

Agents investigating anti-abortion violence have been working with local law-enforcement officers and civilian watchdog groups to monitor known extremists and heighten security at clinics across the nation in the weeks before and after Hill’s execution, said the FBI’s Michael Costanzi, who investigates anti-abortion extremists.

Though shootings have decreased, the number of harassing incidents such as phone threats and, more recently, anthrax threats, have held steady, he said.

“The movement is definitely still out there and still going strong,” Costanzi said.

Pensacola police said they are also taking precautions and enhancing security around the city’s two clinics, site of three of last decade’s murders.

Since the first firebomb ripped through The Ladies Center clinic – now the Community Healthcare Center – in June 1984 (no one was hurt), Pensacola has experienced more violence against clinics than any other city in the country. Three of the seven abortion-related murders have been committed here. Busloads of protesters – from as far away as Milwaukee – once routinely jammed the streets outside the city’s clinics.

“We lived here, we saw how these people acted. It was horrible,” said Brenda Thompson, a hostess at the Coffee Cup Restaurant. “It’s been going on as far back as I remember. [Hill] needed to be locked away.”

Dion McAlarney was seven months into her new job as executive director of the anti-abortion Safe Harbor Women’s Resource Center in Pensacola when the Hill homicides occurred.

“We were appalled,” she said. “It’s so opposite to what we’re about … I feel sorry for him. He seems so misguided. But I do feel the law should prevail.”

Hill, a sandy-haired, defrocked Presbyterian minister originally from Coral Gables, was one of the first to publicly advocate “justifiable homicide” against abortion doctors. Ten days after activist Michael Griffin shot and killed Dr. David Gunn in March 1993 outside the Pensacola Women’s Medical Services clinic, Hill went on the “Donahue” show to defend Griffin’s actions. The appearance launched his status as spokesman for anti-abortion extremism.

In the months leading up to the shooting, Hill was regularly seen around the clinic, witnesses said. From the sidewalk out front, he would scream, “God hates murder!” and “Mommy, mommy, don’t kill me!”

“You could see a person who had latched on to this one thing,” said Bill Caplinger, a volunteer escort at the clinic who often videotaped Hill outside the clinic.

On the morning of July 29, 1994, Hill waited for Britton, Gunn’s replacement, and Barrett outside The Ladies Center clinic. As they pulled up, Hill fired three shots from a 12-gauge Mossberg pump shotgun into Barrett’s Nissan pickup, ducked behind a tree, reloaded, and fired three more shots, according to reports of the incident. Britton, 69, and Barrett, 74, were killed at the scene. Barrett’s wife, June Barrett, who was in the jump seat, had arm and chest injuries but survived.

As his defense, Hill offered that he was justly protecting unborn babies by killing the doctor, a defense the judge dismissed.

Since then, Hill’s “justifiable homicide” has been taken up by anti-abortion hard-liners across the country.

Fringe elements call the killing of abortion doctors “u.d.r.,” or ultimate determined rescue, according to “Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War,” by James Risen and Judy L. Thomas. The Army of God Web site, which advocates violence against abortion doctors, quotes Old Testament passages as justification. A favorite is Genesis 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.”

Rev. Michael Bray, an anti-abortion activist from Bowie, Md., and author of “A Time to Kill,” which advocates the murder of doctors, said he believes a growing number of people are supporting the concept of “justified homicide” of abortion providers, even if they’re not acting on it. Each year, Bray organizes the White Rose Banquet, in honor of anti-abortion activists serving prison time, which draws about 80 to 100 people, he said. Every year, a letter from Hill is read at the banquet, drawing cheers from the crowd, he said.

“Eventually the truth will prevail,” Bray said in a telephone interview. “There will be justice for the unborn, just like there was justice for the slaves. Society will right its wrongs.”

Rev. Don Spitz, an activist from Virginia and Hill’s self-proclaimed spiritual adviser, said he visited Hill in prison two weeks ago and found him in a “good frame of mind, kidding, his usual self.” Spitz said he was returning to Florida to spend the final week with Hill.

“I don’t think he wants to die, but he’s quite willing to,” Spitz said. “He knows God is calling to give his life for the unborn children.”

But Dallas Blanchard, a retired sociology professor at the University of West Florida who has studied anti-abortion violence, said activists like Bray, Spitz and Hill are part of a disappearing sect, similar to what happened to the Ku Klux Klan and other violent factions of the anti-civil rights movement. He said there may be an isolated incident or two following Hill’s death but he doesn’t expect a new rash of violence.

“They’ve lost; no one agrees with them,” he said. “The more people who are caught and get drastic sentences, the less often it will occur.”

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