Anti-Abortionists Get List Of Patients

A militant anti-abortion group says it has obtained a list of 500 women who had abortions at one area clinic and will contact them by mail.

“We’re going to remind them there’s healing in the Lord. We’re going to suggest they call their priest or rabbi or ministers. And we’re going to offer them the services of qualified counselors to get over what they’ve done,” Don Treshman told The (Baltimore) Sun.

Treshman, director of Rescue America, told The Philadelphia Inquirer his group had assembled the list of 500 names by combing through one clinic’s trash. He would not identify the clinic.

Treshman said the names were obtained legally since they came from the trash, but abortion-rights activists disputed that Friday and said any letter-writing campaign might be grounds for a lawsuit.

“If a woman were damaged by this information and (Rescue America) obtained it improperly, then we would help the woman go after them for damages,” said Roger Evans, director of litigation for Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

In a recent Michigan case, clinic clients sued abortion opponents who went through trash and then publicized the women’s names.

Others questioned whether abortion patients’ names could have been found in a Maryland clinic’s trash.

“Every clinic that I’ve spoken to in Maryland keeps their files in locked cabinets,” said Priscilla Smith, staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy in New York. “And if they’re going to dispose of them, they usually incinerate them.”