March 6, 1993: Abortion Clinic Owners Warn of Escalating Violence

Eleanor Smeal, the president of the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF), holds a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, to highlight the need for more volunteers to protect women’s clinics. At the conference, Texas clinic owner Marilyn Chrisman Eldridge describes the extensive damage wrought after anti-abortion activists set her Corpus Christi clinic on fire; the fire destroyed not only her clinic but seven neighboring businesses. She concludes by telling the gathered reporters: “I cannot close without telling you that whenever I turn the key in the ignition of my car, I worry that a bomb might go off. The hatred of the antis [anti-abortion protesters] is such that I fear I will be murdered. That is how bad it is getting.” Patricia Baird-Windle, owner of the Aware Woman Centers for Choice in central Florida, describes how activists trained by Operation IMPACT (see June 6, 1993) have verbally and physically harassed her staffers and her patients. She concludes: “You must not think that these protesters are all peaceful, religious people are misguided and rude, perhaps, but harmless. The hardcore group arrayed against us is paid. Domestic terrorism is their job. They are extortionists pure and simple.” Baird-Windle will later describe the reporters as largely “disengaged” and uninterested in exploring “the prophesy of impending violence that we had handed to them.” [Baird-Windle and Bader, 2001, pp. xiv-xviii] Days later, Florida abortion provider Dr. David Gunn will be murdered (see March 10, 1993).