San Francisco Women's Clinic Hit By Arson Attack

Six Family Planning Clinics Torched During February Anti-Abortion
Blitz

By Tom Burghardt
Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR)

San Francisco (February 28, 1995) San Francisco's Pregnancy
Consultation Center was hit by an anti-abortion arson attack
early this morning. Damage to the clinic was minor and there were
no injuries.
     The fire, reported early Tuesday morning, was similar to
other arson attacks that have hit California women's clinics
during February. Since February 1, six California family planning
facilities have been damaged by anti-abortion terrorists.
     According to Lt. Al Silvestri of the Arson Squad, a tire
filled with gasoline was placed against an inside wall adjacent
to the side entrance of the building that houses the clinic.
     "The fire caused a lot of black smoke" but caused only about
$500 damage to the building and minor damage to the contents of
one room of the building, according to the Arson Inspector.
     There is an unmistakable pattern to these recent attacks on
family planning centers. Silvestri said that gas-filled tires had
been used to set fire at clinics in Santa Barbara and Ventura.
     Since February 1, 1995, six women's health care facilities
have been targeted by anti-abortion terrorists:

February 1: Planned Parenthood, Modesto - $800,000 damage.

February 9: Family Planning Associates, Ventura - $1,000 damage.

February 10: Women's Medical Group, Santa Barbara - $1,500
damage.

February 15: Planned Parenthood, San Luis Obispo - $50,000
damage.

February 21: Choice Medical Group, Soquel - $500 damage.

February 28: Pregnancy Consultation Center, San Francisco -
damage estimates are in the $600 range.

     These attacks on women's health care facilities are
consistent with the anti-abortion movement's "strategy of
tension" and covert guerilla war against clinics and health care
providers.
     The nature of their multitiered campaign to destroy women's
access to reproductive health care is also consistent with the
anti-abortion movement's larger social and political goals: to
create a climate of terror and to force physicians, clinic
workers and their supporters to stop providing family planning,
birth control and abortion for women.
     Is it coincidental that this latest offensive against
women's rights parallels Operation Rescue of California's
February "No Place to Hide" campaign that targets doctors, clinic
workers and their families in their homes?
     While Operation Rescue and other anti-abortion spokespersons
deny any knowledge of these terror attacks, the ideological
climate of fear, the demonization of women and the physicians who
support them are consistent with the anti-abortion movement's
strategy of terror: destroy access to family planning and it is
irrelevant whether or not abortion remains "legal" in the United
States.
     As clinic bombings, arson fires, butyric acid attacks and
the assassination of doctors, clinic workers and supporters of
women's rights escalate, we are faced with a choice: roll-over
and play dead, thus losing our hard-won freedoms, or confront the
terrorists and drive them from our communities.

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BACORR: DEFENDING CLINICS, EXPOSING TERRORISM -- BECAUSE NO ONE'S
GONNA DO IT FOR US!
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