The new bill was called the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, and was intended to bring federal law enforcement into play to stop the “rescues” and intimidation at clinics where women obtained abortion services.
Two months later, on Friday morning, July 22, Paul Hill joined protesters in front of the Pensacola Ladies Center, as he usually did. No rescuing anymore, Clinton had made the stakes too high for most pro-lifers, effectively killing the tactic.
Hill had a lot on his mind. Michael Griffin had apologized for shooting and killing the abortionist. Hill found that morally inconsistent. If given the opportunity, he would not make the same error. There was a new doctor named John Britton replacing Gunn at the clinic.
The next day, Saturday afternoon, Paul Hill, his wife Karen, and their three young children went to the beach. He played in the surf with the kids, his thoughts swirling, heart pounding, his eyes nearly tearing up. He prayed for strength. He held each child in the deep water, over their heads, briefly, as they clung to him. “Here, Lord,” he thought. “I offer you my children, as Abraham offered you his son.”
His inaction to date gnawed at him. Here he had defended use of force on TV, but never taken action himself. On Wednesday he bought a 12-gauge Mosberg pump-action shotgun from Mike’s Gun Shop. The firearm was called The Defender, used for close-range shooting. At another gun shop, Hill bought 12-gauge, 2 ¾-inch shells containing buckshot. Later that day he signed in at a shooting range and practiced, and returned the next day as well.
On Friday, Hill planted white crosses in the grass just outside the Ladies Center clinic. He was ordered by police to pull them out. He obeyed. At 7:20 a.m. a Nissan pickup carrying Dr. Britton and a security guard pulled up. Paul Hill pulled out The Defender, which had been hidden in a rolled-up pro-life sign he was carrying. Aim, fire. Reload. Aim, fire. In seconds he pumped out seven shells, spraying the truck with 90 buckshot pellets, shattering windows, killing the doctor and security guard. Then he set the shotgun down on the ground, walked over to the policemen at the scene who were running toward him.
“One thing’s for sure,” Hill said aloud as he was cuffed. “No babies will be killed here today.”
Radical pro-lifers who supported any means to stop abortion admired Hill for taking action. But Paul—Lord keep and nurture his soul—got caught, didn’t he? Just like Griffin. The shootings had sent a chill through the abortion industry, but were clumsy, executed in broad daylight. No chance the pro-lifer could get away. Neither Hill nor Griffin had been a soldier. The soldier trains and plans in order to fight, escape, and engage the enemy another day. It would take someone with a razor-sharp mind, a tactician, someone smarter than the police and the FBI, with a military mind-set and a secret agent’s discretion, to operate ruthlessly yet in the shadows, to take the battle to a new level.
Chapter 8 ~ Remembrance Day
The most visible and violent fronts in the abortion war were in the United States. Across the border in Canada, doctors were not being shot. The most serious act of anti-abortion violence in the country had been the 1992 firebombing of the Morgentaler clinic in Toronto. To the extent the pro-life fringe existed in Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, was the most fertile ground for it. The roots of that lay in peculiarities of the “Left Coast” political culture. It was a province where politics was a contact sport, passions running high, as though those arriving from back east took one whiff of the cedar in the air and suddenly became high on it. This extreme political climate gave the province a hardcore religious right that was a Canadian anomaly.
Gynecologists and obstetricians generally are not high-profile physicians. But in Vancouver, Dr. Gary Romalis was becoming known, at least in some circles. He provided abortion services as part of his practice, and had been quoted in the press speaking on medical issues related to abortion. To a few pro-life activists in B.C. who looked out for such things—such as Betty Green, known as the godmother of all things pro-life in the province—an article in a scholarly journal was proof that Dr. Romalis was a busy terminator of preborn babies:
“Abortion Experience At The Vancouver General Hospital”
By Garson Romalis, MD, FRCSC Journal of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada
The article noted that Vancouver General Hospital performed about 5,000 abortions a year. Of those, 89 percent were at 13 weeks or less. But the remaining 11 percent was the key to pro-lifers—550 abortions were performed in the second trimester. Bottom line to the activists was that Dr. Romalis was doing late-term abortions.
The pro-life movement flowered in B.C. but so too did the pro-choice response, which came back just as hard, working with police, taking videotapes of demonstrations. One of the regulars seen on those videos was a man named Gordon Watson. Gord had worked at a sawmill at one time. His father had fought in Korea as a Provost captain, his grandfather had been gassed at Ypres in the First World War. And Gord Watson?
“A full-tilt Bible-thumper,” he said. “That’s me. I’m it.”
He was there on the street preaching the gospel of life. Mainstream pro-life types didn’t do that. Gord felt they were happy just to sit around and talk about it over coffee.
He used to tag along with his father to political meetings. Dad was a bit of a hell-raiser on that front, enjoyed the battle. Gord would go further than that—he would be nastier.
It’s the B.C. election of 1991 and there’s Gord Watson on TV, tearing a strip off a candidate. Someone lunges at him, a full-out brawl begins, and Gord manages to get the mike, his shirt torn, yet appearing collected as can be—this is great stuff—and he politely asks, “Can I address the chair, please?” The TV journalists there take to him like moths to a flame, cameras rolling, and: “Abortion is murder, and I think British Columbians deserve the right to have a referendum on it.”
The pro-lifers loved it, this 42-year-old firecracker who stood up and said what they all believed, fearless.
“Betty,” he later said to veteran pro-lifer Betty Green, “I’ll make you look like sweetness and light.”
Others in the movement couldn’t quite figure him out. He ended up in and out of jail, alternately the darling and pariah of the movement, constantly writing letters, getting in a war with a Vancouver Sun reporter whom he called an “abortion promoter.” Once, Gord Watson went south to attend a pro-life conference in San Antonio, a big event. Joe Scheidler, the Chicago pro-life leader, put it on. Great guy, thought Gord. At one of the big sessions, a fellow stood up and spoke about pro-lifers being condemned for violent acts. “We are moderates, the speaker insisted. We don’t lynch abortionists, we don’t blow up abortion mills.” Pause. Grin. “Not that we have any moral problem with that!”
Gord thought about it. If you have a belief, don’t you have to back it up? What is the line between belief and action? He could feel the tension between pro-life camps on the issue. One night he was pulled aside and asked to attend a private meeting at a motel off the freeway. Why not? The motel had its own steakhouse. My kinda place, he said to himself.
He went to the assigned room. A man asked him questions. How long you been active? Where you from? Family? Gord told him about his dad’s service in Korea.
“You know anything about firearms?”
Gord looked at his interrogator, puzzled. Bit of an odd question, wasn’t it?
“Ever had any sort of military training?” His mind raced. This guy’s assessing whether I’ll take up arms for the movement, he thought. He reflected later that it was probably fifty-fifty that he was being assessed as either someone they hoped would shoot, or feared would shoot.