Terrorizing Abortion Providers: The “Other Abortion War” Quietly Continues

9.pm. In bed at hotel. Landline rings. ‘Hello”? “Dr. Benton ?” “Yes. Who is this?” “How many babies did you kill today?”

I hung up. Heart started pounding. Someone who doesn’t like me at all at all knows exactly where I am. I disconnect the landline.

Immediately cell phone rings. Blocked number. “Hello?” Same voice. I didn’t say anything but listened as he spoke…Heart pounding. Someone who doesn’t like me…knows my cell phone number and knows other things about me. …I hang up.

Immediately he called again. I didn’t answer. He left a message on my voicemail, saying, “this isn’t----(east coast state where Dr. Benton lives)—this is------------(southern state where she traveled periodically to perform abortions).”

I didn’t sleep much that night.

The above is an excerpt from an e-mail I received from Dr. Felicia Benton (not her real name). I had recently concluded a phone interview with Dr. Benton about her experience as an abortion provider who travels from her home state several times a month to provide abortions in underserved areas. The matter of these disturbing phone calls did not arise until we continued our conversation via e-mail. Dr. Benton also mentioned that the caller knew in which city she lived, and had even left abusive messages on her elderly mother’s answering machine.

The media’s coverage of abortion these past few months have focused, understandably, on the seemingly endless assaults on the procedure by Congress and by individual state legislatures , who have passed measures ever more extreme and bizarre: e.g., the House bill that allows hospitals to refuse abortions even if a woman’s life is at stake, the recently passed South Dakota law that compels women seeking abortion to first go for “counseling” to a religiously based, anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Center and then wait three days before they can legally obtain an abortion, and so on. But Dr. Benton’s experience—which is hardly unique-- reminds us that there is, simultaneously, another war on abortion occurring, this one waged directly on abortion providers. read more>>

Source: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org