Doctors targeted in fight over future of Ohio abortion clinic

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Anti-abortion activists hoping to shutter a southwest Ohio abortion clinic are targeting the offices, homes and neighborhoods of gynecologists and obstetricians whose help is needed for the facility to meet a state mandate.

Created Equal has placed photos of Wright State University physicians who assist Women’s Med Center of Dayton in emergencies on its truck bearing bloody-fetus photos. They’ve traveled the area in the vehicle and parked it outside doctors’ residences and offices. Postcards to their neighbors describe the doctors as “killers among us.”

The group recently extended the campaign to OB-GYN doctors unaffiliated with the clinic. Executive director Mark Harrington said the letters have be sent to all those who live within 30 miles of Miami Valley Hospital warning of similar treatment if they help the clinic.

“They’re not happy about it, obviously, which is the point,” Harrington said. “We believe that if you’re going to be complicit in abortion that there’s going to be a price to pay and that price is public relations, that price is your own profile in the community.”

The push follows a host of new abortion restrictions recently imposed in Ohio. At least a half-dozen clinics have closed or reduced services over several years.

Women’s Med Center co-owner Valerie Haskell said targeting doctors who help the clinic in emergencies, as state law requires, is unfair.

“These physicians are heroes to the 2 million females residing in southwestern Ohio, especially considering one out of every three will have an abortion in their lifetime,” she said.