Abortion Backers: We’re Losing Growing Fear, Uncertainty Scaring Off Some Doctors

It will be the friendliest of audiences in the safest of settings: a prochoice prayer service today at a Seattle church, where abortionrights activists will show their support for abortion providers and decry recent violence against them.

But virtually no doctors will be there to hear it.

At a meeting of Seattle area abortion providers last week, most regretfully told organizers they didn’t feel safe enough to appear publicly at any pro-choice functions.

“They’re terrified. You can’t blame them,” said Deborah Mero of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which is organizing the event to commemorate the 22nd anniversary today of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision legalizing abortion nationwide.

The anniversary comes at a particularly poignant moment in the everraging battle over abortion. With talk about abortion restrictions emanating from newly elected conservatives and last month’s clinic shootings in Massachusetts and Virginia, there’s a palpable shift in momentum, a sense that abortion foes are gaining the upper hand.

“Our goal is to make abortions affordable, available and safe. On the first two, we’re clearly losing,” said Karen Cooper, acting executive director of the state chapter of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.

The fatal shootings Dec. 30 at two Brookline, Mass., clinics were the fifth and sixth such attacks in less than two years.

For many abortion providers, November was noteworthy for another reason: the shooting of a Vancouver, B.C., doctor who performed abortions. That, perhaps more than the recent East Coast shootings, sent tremors through the abortion-rights community here.

Besides being closer to home, the shooting of Garson Romalis was striking because he was wounded at his house, not on the job.

And there has been no arrest in the case.

“OK, the terrorism is getting to us,” conceded one King County doctor who performs abortions.

At the gathering last week of area abortion providers, she heard three doctors indicate they were thinking seriously of getting out of the business. The doctor said she would stop if her family wanted her to.

“It’s not worth our kids growing up orphans,” she said.

Abortion-rights supporters are hoping for a public backlash.

“Our hope is mainstream America won’t tolerate this around a legal procedure,” said Tom McPherson of Planned Parenthood of SeattleKing County.

But some pro-choice activists said the climate is too uncertain to wait. There’s talk among some of putting together a new underground network of abortion providers that would operate through phone trees and clandestine meetings.

That kind of talk has some abortion providers upset.

“This is not a call-girl system. We’re talking about something that is legal,” said Sheldon Biback, comedical director of Planned Parenthood of Seattle-King County.

“If we do this under the table, they’ve won.”