Originally posted at Ms. Magazine by Kathy Spillar on 1/21/2011. Cross-posted with permission.

We mark the 38th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision tomorrow, and celebrate how it affirmed that women should have power over their own bodies–but we are also alarmed at the rising tide of anti-abortion violence in the U.S.

Following the 2008 elections, and with little hope of a quick reversal of Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion extremists announced they would “return to the streets.” Threats escalated against clinics and doctors in some 14 states, and on May 30, 2009, late-abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was assassinated in Wichita, KS.

Shortly after the murder, the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue of Wichita launched its “Keep It Closed” campaign to prevent Dr. Leroy Carhart–who had travelled monthly from his home in Nebraska to work with Dr. Tiller–from reopening a clinic in Kansas or expanding his own clinic in Nebraska. Nonetheless, Carhart did expand his Nebraska practice, only to see Nebraska lawmakers enact onerous new abortion restrictions last April. As Carhart explained,

Under one law, even a woman who has been hospitalized and diagnosed suicidal or a young girl who has been raped, even raped by a close family member, would not be able to obtain an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. A second law would put any questionable medical study that has ever been published above a doctor’s informed medical judgment and expertise. These laws will make it harder for patients to get an abortion when they really need them, when they are under the most desperate of circumstances and even when they are clearly medically, morally and religiously justified.

Saying that the legislation “merely strengthens my commitment to fight for women’s reproductive health and rights,” Carhart joined forces with an abortion clinic in Germantown, Md. to provide hard-to-get late abortions there. Operation Rescue countered by joining local Maryland anti-abortion leaders in announcing plans to drive him out of the state, organizing demonstrations against the clinic in December and this coming weekend. Leaflets with Carhart’s photo have been circulating as part of the protests.

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