Abortion providers put themselves at risk of violence and sexual assault for simply doing their jobs
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Abortion providers are at risk for all kinds of violence for doing their jobs and making sure that women have access to safe, legal abortions. We often hear about the fanatical pro-lifers who protest, stalk and harass people who work at clinics that provideAbortion providers put themselves at risk of violence and sexual assault for simply doing their jobs
Abortion providers are at risk for all kinds of violence for doing their jobs and making sure that women have access to safe, legal abortions. We often hear about the fanatical pro-lifers who protest, stalk and harass people who work at clinics that provide reproductive health services for women. We know that they make these workplaces incredibly unsafe for these employees. But we don’t ever hear about how that work also targets them for sexual assault and abuse. Calla Hales is the director of A Preferred Women’s Health Center, which operates abortion clinics in North Carolina and Georgia. In 2015, she went on a second date with a guy who wanted to know the specifics of her work in what she described as “women’s health.” She got a strange feeling from him during their date. After he abruptly ended their dinner, and asked her to go home with him, she declined. That’s when he walked her to her car and proceeded to rape her. “He said things like I should have expected this and that I deserved it. He asked how I could live with myself and said I should repent. That I was a jezebel. That I was a murderer. That he was doing no worse to me than I had done to women. He said he would make me remember him.” Hales was targeted by an anti-abortion extremist. Unfortunately, what happened to her is not an isolated incident. Anti-abortion activists are known for their violent behavior directed at abortion providers and volunteers and it has dramatically escalated over the last several years. It’s not enough that they disagree with a woman’s legal right to have an abortion. Some of them believe that murder, rape, and arson are acceptable tactics in their war to preserve fetal rights. In its 2016 report, the National Abortion Federation (NAF), which monitors clinic harassment and violence, found that picketing, vandalism, obstruction, invasion, trespassing, burglary, stalking, assault and battery, and bomb threats are all on the rise. Clinics reported 60,000 incidents of picketing that year, an all-time high since the NAF began tracking these statistics in 1977. The report also documented a five-fold increase in hate speech and internet harassment, which escalated after the election. The 2016 National Clinic Violence Survey, published by the Feminist Majority Foundation, found that the percentage of clinics reporting the most severe types of anti-abortion violence and threats of violence has dramatically increased from the first six months of 2014 to the first six months of 2016 — from 19.7 percent to 34.2 percent. Hales was raped in November 2015. Read more