Operation Rescue's "No Place To Hide" Campaign Fizzles By Tom Burghardt, Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights San Francisco (April 16, 1995) With much media hype and fanfare, Operation Rescue of California (ORC) and Missionaries to the Preborn (MTP), brought their "no place to hide" road show to the Bay Area. "No Place to Hide" is a national campaign launched by the anti-abortion movement in 1992 that targets abortion providers, clinic workers and their families with a multitude of harassment tactics. The purpose of the campaign is to force physicians to stop providing women with access to abortion and other reproductive health care. Tactics include: residential pickets, issuing "wanted" posters with the photograph, name, home address and weekly itinerary of abortion providers. In some cases, the family members of physicians and clinic workers, including small children, have been followed and harassed by anti-abortion activists. According to the National Abortion Federation, physicians have received hundreds of death threats and harassing phone calls since Randall Terry declared, "We have found the weak link is the doctor. We're going to expose them. We're going to humiliate them." Since Terry's speech in 1992, 5 people have also been murdered and 15 other individuals seriously wounded by anti- abortion assassin's. Both Dr. David Gunn and Dr. John Bayard Britton were targets of local "no place to hide" campaigns prior to their assassination by Rescue America and Defensive Action gun thugs. During a press conference in Sacramento on Wednesday, April 12, Jeff White, Operation Rescue's California director and Joseph Foreman, the self-styled director of Missionaries to the Preborn "National", declared that the two groups would launch a new series of clinic blockades as a "challenge" to the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) law over the Easter weekend. White and Foreman also declared that a new round of residential pickets at the homes of abortion providers would lead "abortionist's to abandon their grisly trade and come to Christ." During a sparsely attended rally Thursday night at the Cornerstone Bible Church in San Jose, White, Foreman and other "rescue" leaders spoke to a nearly empty church. According to reporters who covered the rally, approximately 25 people attended the Operation Rescue event. A spirited counter-demonstration organized by the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR) and other supporters of women's reproductive freedom, attracted more than 50 activists, who had been mobilized on a moment's notice. According to an Operation Rescue message on their hotline, (800) 705-1175, the anti-abortion groups promised to blockade women's health centers in San Diego, Long Beach and Malibu on Friday, April 14. No attempts were made by either Operation Rescue of California or Missionaries to the Preborn to blockade women's clinics in southern California. On Saturday, April 15, approximately 40 anti-abortion activists turned out at San Jose's Planned Parenthood facility on the Alameda. They were outnumbered by clinic defenders. Clinic defense activists accompanied Operation Rescue and Missionaries to the Preborn to the home of a San Jose physician. Police would not allow the anti-abortion brigade to enter the gated-community. There were no incidents and no arrests; however, BACORR counter-demonstrators confronted the Operation Rescue "spiritual warriors." Missionaries to the Preborn leaders, Joseph Foreman and Gary McCullough are long-time anti-abortion activists with ties to Paul Hill's Defensive Action network. Foreman was one of six original signers of Hill's Defensive Action "Declaration" which asserts that the assassination of abortion providers is "justifiable homicide." Foreman later removed his name from the "Declaration." Gary McCullough served as a media consultant with the Defensive Action group during Michael Griffin's trial and wrote an article in the anti-abortion journal, "Life Advocate", asserting that Michael Griffin, Dr. Gunn's killer, was a "hero." When confronted by this writer during an interview with KNTV Channel 11, McCullough declared that "Paul Hill is my friend. No, I won't denounce his actions." Other Operation Rescue of California activists made similar statements to BACORR clinic defenders during the picket. Jeff White however, continues to insist that Operation Rescue is a "peaceful" organization. Last month however, White was convicted in San Diego for harassment activities against San Diego abortion providers. White lost an $800,000 civil suit for "no place to hide" activities in 1993. White and 10 other Operation Rescue members, including Joseph Foreman, will be sentenced in Modesto, CA on April 26, as a result of a violent altercation with police during last year's "Summer of Missions '94" caravan. The significance of the Easter weekend "offensive" by Operation Rescue and Missionaries to the Preborn, cannot be gauged by the number of activists they are able to attract to their events. Clearly, the "rescue" movement is on the ropes and will probably never again play a significant role in closing women's clinics through mass "rescue" tactics. This however, misses the point. The evolution of the "rescue" movement since 1991, has seen the development of full-time, cadre-style organizations which increasingly resort to violence and terrorism to achieve their political goals - the destruction of women's access to reproductive health care. From violent clinic invasions to bombing and arson campaigns, the anti-abortion movement seeks to win through terror what they have lost politically. In conjunction with their goal to destroy abortion access, anti-abortion groups such as Missionaries to the Preborn, have embraced the totalizing political agenda of the far-right and the burgeoning Christian Patriot movement. Many of these activists have become members and key organizers of the far-right Militia Movement. Some anti-abortionist's are networking with racists, homophobes and anti-Semites on the fringes of the Patriot movement. While Operation Rescue of California and Missionaries to the Preborn are incapable of either building or sustaining a mass base, their demonizing rhetoric that alleges that physicians are "murderers" and that women who have abortions should be "punished", are clear signs that the anti-abortion movement is evolving in a markedly fascistic direction. Their connections to violent factions within the Christian Patriot movement, such as right-wing ideologue Howard Phillips' United States Taxpayers party, indicate that authoritarian solutions to the multitude of crises plaguing capitalism and its "new world order", are at the top of their agenda. Thus, their uncritical support for racist immigrant-bashing such as California's Proposition 187 and their demonization of poor, minority and working class women. Many anti-abortion activists have rejected the violent tactics of Randall Terry's "Biblical remnant." However, a growing minority have embraced the "leaderless resistance" doctrine of neo-Nazi and Christian Patriot militia groups and are organizing themselves into decentralized paramilitary combat cells. While the total number of activists engaged in covert terror is unknown, one inescapable fact can be contrasted to the rhetoric of "peaceful, prayerful" protest - anti-abortion violence and terrorism is on the rise with no end in sight. For the women's movement and the Left, the question is no longer whether the anti-abortion movement or their corporate and State-sponsored allies will outlaw abortion. Either we reverse the tide that threaten women's access to reproductive health care on all levels, or it will be a moot point whether or not abortion remains a "legal" right of women. The anti-abortion movement has realized this and have crafted tactics that reflect their current strategy; the question is, has the Left?