US family planning clinics, women's health centres, and abortion providers fear new attacks after Paul Hill was executed in Florida for murdering a doctor who provided abortions, and his volunteer bodyguard.
Figure 1.
Paul Hill was executed last week
Credit: PETER COSGROVE/AP
Hill, a former Protestant preacher, killed Dr John Bayard Britton, aged 69, and his guard, James Barrett, 74, a retired lieutenant colonel in the air force, in July 1994, and wounded Dr Britton's wife, June, a retired nurse. Hill said he killed to prevent the killing of more children by abortion.
Dr Britton flew in to Florida to provide abortions one day a week at the Ladies Health Center in Pensacola, a conservative town on the Gulf coast. In March 1993, Dr David Gunn, who did abortions at the other women's clinic in Pensacola, was murdered by Michael Griffin, now serving a life sentence. Hill appeared on national television after the murder by Griffin and called it “justifiable homicide.”
Hill later said on a website he decided to kill abortionists while he was on the beach with his wife and three children. Hill noticed that Dr Britton always arrived at the clinic early. On the day he committed the murder, Hill came to the clinic before the arrival of the police escort, which had been delayed by car trouble. He killed the bodyguard with a shotgun and then, because he thought Dr Britton might wear a flak jacket, fired at his head and killed him.
“Leaders of the extreme [antiabortion] wing [are calling] for an increase in violence after Paul Hill,” said a spokesperson for the National Abortion Federation, which represents more than 400 non-profit and private clinics, women's health centres, and physicians in the United States and Canada.
Violence increases several months after an incident, the spokesperson said, because antiabortionists meet—as they did in Florida when Hill was executed—and then encourage further violence. “We take it seriously. They stop at nothing, including murder,” she said.