6 Horror Stories From Abortion Providers and Escorts
We hope you’re having a wonderful Halloween. But there’s something truly scary happening this Halloween season. A real-life monster is up for parole in Florida. TOMORROW. In March of 1993, a monster named Michael Griffin murdered abortion provider Dr. David Gunn by shooting him in the back three times. It was the first deliberately targeted murder of an abortion doctor. And as always in these cases, Griffin was supported and encouraged by a sinister network of anti-abortion activists who take care to keep their hands clean.
That same extremist element is still operating today at levels higher than ever outside of clinics. Michael Griffin needs to stay in jail, and his helpers need to stay away from clinics. Here are a few stories of the daily fears that abortion providers and clinic escorts experience:
“I have faced mobs of protesters screaming at me. I have been video-taped. And I have had my car vandalized. Although these have all been horrible experiences, I consider myself lucky that I have not suffered worse at the hands of anti-abortion extremists. As a physician providing safe and legal care to the women of this country, I should not be forced to worry about the situation getting worse.”
“My children and I have been very much traumatized by Michael Griffin and his hate-filled cohorts' cruelty over the years. We've been followed home, physically assaulted, repeatedly threatened with death, our property destroyed, our electricity sabotaged, and have been terrorized in many other ways. I was surprised and very scared when I heard Michael Griffin was even eligible for parole.”
“In 2015 my then 15-month old daughter’s photo was featured on an anti-abortion website that included my office address, medical license numbers, and other identifying information. This was not just an invasion of privacy – it was an action designed to threaten and dissuade me from doing my work.”
“In total I have over 32 years caring for Women and their families in simple and very complex medical and social situations, including abortion care, which I have specialized in. In doing so I have risked my life helping women to be and not to be pregnant, to have and not to have babies. In doing this work, I have worked on wards that are locked because a patient or patients are being threatened with Domestic Violence, including guns, from an intimate partner. I have worked in areas where anti abortionists have thrown Molotov cocktails into the office. I have worked while surrounded by a SWAT team because of a threat. I have worked in offices that had to be evacuated due to the poison threats received through the mail. Regrettably, many in society do not understand the complex nature of pregnancy and how it is impacted by social and medical conditions.”
“I used to travel to provide abortion care in areas that were without it. I would try not to use my own name when booking rental cars, and would try to pay cash so the hotel clerk wouldn’t have my credit card information. One particularly scary night was when driving back to the hotel from the clinic, and I suspected I was being followed. I took a long, circuitous route, but didn’t lose my tail. After pulling in to my hotel, I luckily saw the other car continue driving. I tried to calm myself down, and reassure myself that what happened to Dr Gunn wasn’t going to happen to me, but couldn’t shake the feeling. I locked myself in my room and cried. I wasn’t able to asleep that night until I moved a heavy desk and chair in front of the hotel room door. I figured it might not stop a determined attacker, but would at least slow them down.
Imagine a cardiologist having to go through this to get to the hospital to help a patient having a heart attack.”
“I stand on the sidewalk and document the aggressive older women who elbow and push their way next to a patient while stepping on the patient’s shoes and throwing plastic embryo dolls in their face, to large grown men screaming at scared women trying to enter a medical clinic. Many of these men and women carry large 4×2 signs as they chase the patients/companions down, pushing, shoving all the while calling them murderers, baby killers. sluts, whores etc. They jump in front of the patients/companions and stop or walk so slow that the patients are trapped between the hordes of protestors. The volunteer Clinic escorts, with hands usually in their pockets or by their sides, use their bodies as shields to protect these patients and companions from this harassment all while never speaking to any of the protestors. The protestors retaliate by calling these Clinic escorts “Deathscorts”. They continue their verbal diatribes against the volunteer escorts mentioning personal details about the escorts they could only have found through extensive research into the escorts personal lives. They take down their license tag numbers and harass them on social media. They have made and carry large signs with pictures of the Medical clinics physician’s names and sometimes home addresses calling them murderers. They post this information on their social media sites. They have done this with Clinic staff as well. They yell thinly veiled threats of “Your time is coming, sooner than you think” and the like. In my opinion, lately, the tone on the sidewalk has escalated greatly and I question the mental stability of several of these protestors. I watch as they quickly excite each other into a fever pitch.”
To read more about the horrifying Michael Frederick Griffin story check out this Slate article.
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