Fear in the Land

By Jill Smolowe

Though John C. Salvi III -- the man charged with closing out 1994 by shooting up three abortion clinics, killing two people and wounding five others -- was under lock and key last week, the reverberations of his two-day rampage could be felt from coast to coast. In St. Louis, Missouri, the Reproductive Health Services clinic is purchasing an intercom so that the security guard posted outside can relay messages without having to open the front door. The Choices Women's Medical Center in New York City, which is already patrolled by armed guards, made plans to install a metal detector. Even Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, who has practiced under the tightest security since he was shot by Rachelle Shannon in 1993, felt a new level of anxiety. "The turning point in our profession occurred last week," he said, "when innocent bystanders, as it were, were slaughtered."

It is too early to tell whether Salvi's alleged rampage will ultimately foster a new sense of restraint or raise the level of hostility in the country's rancorous -- and increasingly deadly -- abortion debate. But few doubt that the shootings in Brookline, Massachusetts, and Norfolk, Virginia -- and the vocal support for these actions from some antiabortion extremists -- have altered the landscape even more drastically than the earlier murders of two doctors in Pensacola, Florida. If pro-choice forces now fear more for their lives, some antiabortion advocates fear for the future of their cause. "What Salvi has done has pushed the movement back years," says Serrin Foster of Feminists for Life of America. "People who want to support the pro- life movement are now reticent to come out and say they're pro-life."

Indeed, in Massachusetts the killings prompted local antiabortion groups to admit a possibility they have long resisted: that "peaceful" protests using such incendiary epithets as murderer and baby killer may create a climate for acts of lethal violence. "The rhetoric doesn't help in any respect," says Philip Lawler, spokesman for the Boston chapter of Operation Rescue. "We're learning that it doesn't help to be shouting things."

In a startling move, Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston called last week for a moratorium on all demonstrations outside abortion clinics to prevent "anything which might engender anger or some other form of violence." Instead, he wrote in the Archdiocesan paper the Pilot, he will designate five churches for antiabortion prayer vigils. "It is very significant when a prominent bishop asks pro-lifers to roll back their activities," says Lawler. But while the National Conference of Catholic Bishops supported Law's action in the Boston area, it stressed that each bishop is sovereign in his own diocese and that there is no plan to call for a national moratorium.

Salvi's deeds also sparked the Clinton Administration to action. Although Attorney General Janet Reno reiterated that federal resources are limited -- there are 1,500 clinics nationwide and only 2,100 U.S. marshals -- and that responsibility for preventing and prosecuting clinic attacks "falls primarily to state and local officials," Clinton ordered the 94 U.S. attorneys to create task forces for improving the security of abortion providers. The Justice Department also initiated its first civil suit under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994, asking the federal court in Cleveland, Ohio, to order antiabortion activist Alan Smith to stop harassing abortion- clinic doctor Gerald Applegate and his wife. The suit, which charges that Smith tried to run Applegate off the road and shouted, "I'm going to teach you, baby killer," calls for penalties of up to $10,000.

But beyond Boston and the Beltway, the soul searching was minimal among antiabortion forces eager to distance themselves from Salvi's actions and soldier on. "If we go away, it's like we are conceding guilt," said Joseph Scheidler, executive director of Chicago's Pro-Life Action League. He blames the escalating violence on the FACE law and the buffer zones enforced by some local authorities to prevent blockades. "If you make it tougher to have peaceful protests," he argues, "this will give people a rationale to have violent protests."

The Rev. Flip Benham, national director of Operation Rescue, also predicted escalating violence. "There is little that federal marshals or anyone else can do to halt this murder and violence," he said. "We will not have peace outside the womb until peace is restored within the womb." Meanwhile, the Rev. Donald Spitz, the director of Pro-Life Virginia, camped outside Salvi's Norfolk jail cell using a bullhorn to bellow, "We love you! Thank you for what you did in the name of Jesus!"

If Spitz's views are anathema to most Americans who oppose abortion (and polls indicate only a minority do), they may be increasingly representative of those who still protest regularly outside abortion clinics. According to Dallas Blanchard, a sociology professor at the University of West Florida, membership in moderate right-to-life groups has dwindled nationwide in recent years as the movement has grown more violent. "Fewer people want to be identified with bombings and murders," he says. "But those who are left tend to be the most radical." Blanchard is helping the National Abortion Federation computerize its data on clinic attacks -- since 1976, the federation has counted more than 3,000 violent or threatening incidents -- in hopes of developing a profile of violence-prone activists.

Antiabortion forces depict Salvi as a solo nut case, and there is certainly evidence of mental instability in the days preceding the attacks. He disrupted a Christmas Eve Mass at St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church in Seabrook, New Hampshire, by walking to the altar and calling the priest a "whore," then shouting vulgarities at the congregants. Last week Salvi released a rambling six-page statement in which he said, "I wish to receive the death penalty" if convicted, and "I will become a Catholic priest" if acquitted. His seemingly paranoid rantings about the jail food -- "The grits appeared to have semen in them" -- may pave the way for an insanity defense.

But there were also clues, albeit inconclusive ones, that Salvi had at least some contact with other abortion foes. Investigators retrieved from Salvi's pickup truck a receipt bearing a name that closely resembled Massachusetts Citizens for Life, the state's most moderate antiabortion group. Frances Hogan, the organization's former president, says Salvi attended one of her group's meetings but found its efforts too moderate. "His name is on no membership or donor list of ours," she says. The Boston Globe reported that a police search of Salvi's New Hampshire apartment turned up the name and phone number of Spitz, and authorities are still trying to explain why Salvi traveled to Norfolk -- Spitz's home base -- to continue his shooting, bypassing dozens of abortion providers between New Hampshire and Virginia. Spitz dismissed the notion of a conspiracy as a "fabrication of the pro-abort mind and the Justice Department."

At the Justice Department, where investigators are tracking down leads for a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, that is looking into antiabortion violence nationwide, several officials told TIME they had turned up no hard evidence that major right-to-life groups have directed or financed the rash of clinic attacks. Though investigators have discovered such disturbing items as a fringe group's manual offering bombmaking instructions, they have not turned up evidence of smaller conspiracies. Launching their investigation after last July's murder of Dr. John Britton and his escort in Pensacola, FBI officials say they have proceeded gingerly, mindful of the abuses in the 1960s when J. Edgar Hoover spied on civil rights leaders in an attempt to identify a violent radical underground.

Pro-choice activists counter that the feds haven't looked hard enough. "We have lots of questions on the financing," says Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. "Where did Hill get $72,000 to pay for his house in cash? Salvi had $1,277 in cash in his truck." Answers to such questions may emerge from the nine-year-old lawsuit brought by the National Organization for Women against Scheidler of Chicago's Pro-Life Action League. NOW amended the suit in 1989 to include claims under RICO, the federal racketeering law. After wending its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the case is now stalled in procedural wrangling in the federal court in Chicago.

Meanwhile, Virginia authorities have agreed to defer prosecution of Salvi on charges of firing 23 bullets into a Norfolk clinic while Massachusetts pursues two counts of murder and five counts of armed assault with intent to murder, all of which could put him away for life. Though Massachusetts has no death penalty, U.S. Attorney Donald Stern of Boston may seek to indict Salvi under a provision of the 1994 crime bill that allows for the death penalty in cases of "gun murders" during the commission of a federal crime.

As for the future of the abortion debate, both sides anticipate more violence. Planned Parenthood president Pam Maraldo, who informally polled some of the organization's 922 clinics last week, says, "The number of threats has increased markedly. This is open season for antiabortion activists." Lawler of Operation Rescue in Massachusetts is just as nervous. "It is a time when pro-lifers should start worrying about their own personal security," he says. "When crazy people start shooting, you can't control where the next crazy will come from." If that is the most important lesson Lawler draws from Salvi's lunacy, then the abortion wars may be far from over.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 600 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on Jan. 5 by Yankelovich Partners Inc. Sampling error is plus or minus 4%. "Not sures" omitted.

CAPTION: Should the government do more to protect the patients and employees of abortion clinics from physical attacks?

Should the groups that oppose abortion temporarily stop protesting outside abortion clinics?

Do the actions of these groups encourage violence at abortion clinics?

With reporting by Sam Allis/Boston, Wendy Cole/Wichita, Jenifer Mattos/New York and Elaine Shannon/Washington