“They will know your habits and routines. They know where you shop, who your friends are, what you drive, where you live. ... You will be checking under your car everyday — because maybe today is the day someone places an explosive under it.” [from Salon]
Who would expect that a health care worker would receive death threats for providing a legal and patient-requested medical procedure? But this isn't just an isolated incident by a single disturbed person. In fact, the number of these types of incidents is higher in states with more restrictive abortion laws. Researchers studied whether there was an association between harsh abortion restrictions and amount of harassment and violence directed at abortion providers. Results showed a statistically significant relationship between the two.
"'When state legislatures pass laws around abortion, the added attention to the issue fuels the obsessions of volatile people. ... [T]he targeting of providers’ state governments 'probably in some way sanctions targeting us for harassment.'”
Extreme anti-choice conservative lawmakers are unwittingly offering a justification for abortion protesters to act on their own extreme anti-choice ideologies. Not only are they undermining the rights of women to make choices about their bodies, but they're also fueling the fires of those who make choices to take "justice" into their own hands.
Read the original study here.
