Doctors File Suit Against Abortion Protesters Nationwide Class Action Seeks At Least $200 Million In Damages, Aims To Stem Violence
Doctors terrorized by stalking, arson and murder filed a lawsuit Thursday aimed at silencing the most militant of the nation’s anti-abortion activists and seeking at least $200 million in damages.
The lawsuit is the first nationwide class action intended to protect abortion doctors and clinic workers from violence, Jane Johnson, interim president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said at a New York news conference.
Three abortion doctors have been shot to death in the past 31 months. Two others have been shot and wounded. A gunman killed two clinic workers and wounded five others last December in Brookline, Mass. The lawsuit outlines dozens of other instances of clinic bombings and arsons, death threats and blockades.
“These threats of violence have been allowed to continue for far too long and have overshadowed the lives and well-being of many abortion providers across the country,” Johnson said.
The lawsuit seeks to link the violence to 14 anti-abortion activists from around the country and to two anti-abortion groups, the American Coalition of Life Activists and Advocates for Life Ministries, both based in Portland.
“This is a list of who’s who,” said Andrew Burnett, a co-founder of the American Coalition of Life Activists and one of the defendants.
The groups’ “unwanted” posters describing abortion doctors amount to threats that violate a 1994 law protecting clinics, as well as federal racketeering laws, the lawsuit contends.
The lawsuit details how distribution of the posters was followed by the killings of Drs. David Gunn and John Bayard Britton in Pensacola, Fla., and George Patterson in Mobile, Ala., as well as Britton’s volunteer escort, James Barrett.
It claims copies of “Life Advocate” magazine were found in the possession of Shelley Shannon, after the Grants Pass, Ore., woman shot and wounded a Wichita, Kan., abortion doctor in 1993.
Burnett acknowledges distributing the posters but denies advocating violence, saying, “All we’ve done is simply told the truth.”
However, as in the past, he refused again Thursday to disavow violence.
“It’s not unjustifiable for someone to do it,” Burnett said.
Dr. Elizabeth Newhall, a Portland doctor included on a “deadly dozen” list publicized by Burnett’s group, spoke at a Portland news conference. She said her address and details about the kind of car she drives had been distributed nationally by anti-abortion activists.
“Who wouldn’t feel vulnerable?” she asked. She declined to discuss precautions she and her husband, who also is an abortion doctor, have taken after being included on the list.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction preventing distribution of the posters and the list. It also asks that the defendants be forbidden from any contact, by mail, telephone or in person, with any abortion doctors around the country. Compensatory and punitive damages are sought for various alleged violations of federal and Oregon state laws.