Fear in the Land

• Share

Though John C. Salvi III -- the man charged with closing out 1994 by shooting up three abortion clinics, killing two people and wounding five others -- was under lock and key last week, the reverberations of his two-day rampage could be felt from coast to coast. In St. Louis, Missouri, the Reproductive Health Services clinic is purchasing an intercom so that the security guard posted outside can relay messages without having to open the front door. The Choices Women's Medical Center in New York City, which is already patrolled by armed guards, made plans to install a metal detector. Even Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, who has practiced under the tightest security since he was shot by Rachelle Shannon in 1993, felt a new level of anxiety. "The turning point in our profession occurred last week," he said, "when innocent bystanders, as it were, were slaughtered."

It is too early to tell whether Salvi's alleged rampage will ultimately foster a new sense of restraint or raise the level of hostility in the country's rancorous -- and increasingly deadly -- abortion debate. But few doubt that the shootings in Brookline, Massachusetts, and Norfolk, Virginia -- and the vocal support for these actions from some antiabortion extremists -- have altered the landscape even more drastically than the earlier murders of two doctors in Pensacola, Florida. If pro-choice forces now fear more for their lives, some antiabortion advocates fear for the future of their cause. "What Salvi has done has pushed the movement back years," says Serrin Foster of Feminists for Life of America. "People who want to support the pro- life movement are now reticent to come out and say they're pro-life."

Indeed, in Massachusetts the killings prompted local antiabortion groups to admit a possibility they have long resisted: that "peaceful" protests using such incendiary epithets as murderer and baby killer may create a climate for acts of lethal violence. "The rhetoric doesn't help in any respect," says Philip Lawler, spokesman for the Boston chapter of Operation Rescue. "We're learning that it doesn't help to be shouting things."

In a startling move, Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston called last week for a moratorium on all demonstrations outside abortion clinics to prevent "anything which might engender anger or some other form of violence." Instead, he wrote in the Archdiocesan paper the Pilot, he will designate five churches for antiabortion prayer vigils. "It is very significant when a prominent bishop asks pro-lifers to roll back their activities," says Lawler. But while the National Conference of Catholic Bishops supported Law's action in the Boston area, it stressed that each bishop is sovereign in his own diocese and that there is no plan to call for a national moratorium.