Violence: Here and there

Violence: Here and There

    The New York Times today (July 26, NZ time; July 25 U.S.) has a feature article on how violence ended up closing Dr. George Tiller's Wichita, Kan., clinic. Among the ramifications canvassed in the article is this: “After years of persuading supporters to work within the law, [abortion opponents] say they have already lost credibility among the most ardent abortion opponents who cannot help pointing out that one gunman achieved what all their protests and prayers could not.” Another interesting discussion is on a shift in tactics by abortion opponents away from protesting and toward the courts. Sound familiar?
You can read the article here.

Is New Zealand immune from anti-abortion violence? No. The worst of the battles began with the opening of the abortion clinic in Remuera in 1974. That same year, the police raided the clinic, seizing more than 500 patient files under a warrant later ruled invalid. Years of harassment followed, including arson attacks in 1976 and 1987. (There were also arson attacks on the Auckland offices of SOS, the group that helped women travel to Australia for abortions, and a planned clinic in Christchurch.) In the 1980s the American movement Operation Rescue came to New Zealand, blockading clinics in its efforts to stop women from going inside. And through it all there was the hum of harassment of abortion doctors and their families. Dr. Margaret Sparrow was the subject of a leafleting campaign informing her neighbours that their property values were at risk because she lived nearby, and she was once saved from having a truckload of wet cement dumped in her garage by a neighbour suspicious at the arrival out front of a concrete mixer.
    In Auckland, Rex Hunton, who was the medical director of the abortion clinic in the 1970s, was also a target. His car was vandalised and anti-abortion activists took to phoning his house. If one of his young children answered they would be asked if the butcher was home. “Our youngest son would say ‘No, there’s no butcher lives here. Only my father and he’s a doctor, he’s not a butcher,’” Hunton explained. There were no deaths, although it was suspected that a man killed by a blast in an Auckland house had been building a bomb destined for a clinic. Doctors did receive death threats.
    More recently, however, the Ombusdman has cited threats of violence in refusing to give Right to Life the names of members of an Abortion Standards Committee, which was putting together standards for the provision of abortions in New Zealand. Right to Life reported on its Web site that after members of the committee resigned and were replaced by a single individual, it then sought the name of that person. 
    In a letter of complaint to the Abortion Supervisory Committee (posted on the Right to Life Web site), the group wrote that:
“The Ombudsman advised that the reason given by the previous members of the Standards Committee was that disclosure of their identities would lead to them being personally targeted and subject to improper pressure or harassment. The Ombudsman advised that your Committee ‘has provided examples of situations where the boundaries of legitimate protest appear to have been challenged [if not crossed], and individuals associated with the provision of abortions in New Zealand have been personally targeted and subjected to behaviour that is perceived to be threatening and intimidating.’”
The letter is here.

Anyone who has toured New Zealand’s online anti-abortion community will know there is some very ugly stuff on the Web attacking providers and campaigners, inciting hatred toward them – arguably coming close to inciting violence. I wonder, is this best ignored? What action can and should one take against such Web site content?