After fire-bombings on Christmas and New Year’s Day, the number of attacks since 1982 reached 30.
The epidemic of abortion clinic vandalism that began in 1982 picked up steam throughout 1984. On Christmas Day, three abortion facilities in Pensacola, Florida, were fire-bombed, causing some $375,000 worth of damage.
One week later, on New Year’s Day, the violence resumed as a bomb exploded outside the Hillcrest Women’s Surgi-Center in Washington, D.C. There were no deaths or injuries, but the blast caused extensive damage to the clinic and shattered windows in nearby apartment buildings.
The Washington, D.C., attack brought to 30 the number of cases of abortion clinic violence since May 1982, when the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) began investigating. Twenty-four of the incidents took place in 1984.
To date, no one has been hurt or killed in the violence. Authorities have arrested four people in connection with the Florida bombings. By press time there had been no arrests in the New Year’s Day bombing.
Early last month, President Reagan condemned the attacks as “violent, anarchist activities.” But prochoice groups have criticized the President for his refusal to label the incidents as terrorism. Such a classification would be necessary before the incidents would fall within the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Some also have criticized prolife leaders for not taking an active enough role to stop the violence. Prolife organizations regularly denounce bombings and arson attacks on abortion clinics. But they have not always distanced the prolife movement from the fringe benefits the violence brings. Those benefits include the temporary closing of some clinics and the focusing of national attention on the abortion issue.
Speaking at the site of the damaged Washington, D.C., abortion clinic, Mayor or Marion Barry called on the “Jerry Falwells of the world” to speak out against the violence. Moral Majority leader Falwell responded to Barry in a telegram. “I am personally offended by your sarcastic and uninformed appeal to prolife leaders to condemn [violence against abortion clinics],” he wrote.
Falwell said in the telegram that all reputable prolife leaders have denounced the bombings. “Such violent and inhumane acts” do “great damage to the anti-abortion cause,” Falwell wrote. He added that perpetrators should be treated like “common criminals.”
In a statement issued by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), president John Willke said his organization has “consistently denounced this violence and will continue to do so.… The total thrust of our movement is to stop violence, such as that which takes the life of almost every third baby conceived in America—abortion.
“If we are to adopt the evil tactics of those who promote abortion by using violence ourselves, we would destroy the very ethic that is the foundation of our pro-life commitment,” Willke added.
Barbara Radford, executive director of the National Abortion Federation (NAF), said too few prolife leaders have made unqualified statements denouncing violence against abortion facilities. She said she resents the efforts to link the fire-bombings to the issue of abortion, as exemplified by the NRLC statement.
“Anti-abortion leaders have the responsibility to come out and say, ‘This [violence] is wrong, period, and we don’t believe that this is the way to go about changing the laws of this country,’ ” Radford said. She noted that Falwell handled the matter well, but singled out Moral Majority’s Cal Thomas as having made some “frightening” statements on the issue.
Thomas addressed the issue on ABC’s “Nightline” program. He began with the statement, “I’m personally opposed to the bombings, but I wouldn’t want to impose my morality on others.” Thomas later said the statement was tongue-in-cheek. However, he said he sees nothing wrong with using the bombing incidents to focus on what he feels is the greater violence—abortion. Thomas said that for NAF to object to the violence is “like the Nazi SS complaining about Allied bombs falling on Germany while they are systematically eradicating the Jewish population.…
“The bombing is wrong,” Thomas said. “The riots by blacks during civil rights protests in the ’60s were equally wrong, but served a higher and nobler purpose in that they moved lethargic government leaders to action.… The fact is that if [abortionists] hadn’t slaughtered 15 million babies, there wouldn’t be any buildings getting blown up.”
Likewise, the NRLC’s Jan Carroll makes no apologies for her organization’s emphasis on the “violence that goes on inside the clinic,” which she said “is much more damaging to the moral fiber of this nation.”
In addition to objecting to how prolife leaders have handled the issue, Radford is among those maintaining that the FBI should investigate the violence. She said the ATF has done a thorough job, but that its investigations are too limited. The government’s guidelines defining terrorism are unclear, she said, calling the decision not to involve the FBI a “subjective choice.”
FBI director William Webster has said abortion clinic violence does not fall within the jurisdiction of his agency because “an organized group has not been identified in these criminal acts.” Webster said ATF will be the main investigative agency in the “absence of any evidence of a conspiratorial enterprise.”
Radford said there have not been enough arrests to determine whether or not the attacks are being orchestrated. However, ATF special agent Jack Killorin said 12 of the 30 cases have been solved. He said there have been eight arrests and five convictions. Investigators have not made connections among the incidents, he said, because there are no connections to be made.
An anonymous caller to the Washington Times credited the “Army of God, East Coast Division” with bombing the Hillcrest clinic. Killorin said there have been many crank calls in the name of the Army of God to various media organizations, but that there is no evidence that such an organization exists.
The name Army of God was first used by three men who kidnapped the operator of an abortion clinic in 1982. All three are now in jail. The leader of the group, a Mormon named Don Benny Anderson, is serving a 30-year prison sentence.
