US: Security is being tightened at US abortion clinics amid warnings that the execution of an anti-abortion extremist in Florida next week could trigger violence by the movement's fanatical fringe.
The FBI has also placed known anti-abortion extremists under surveillance in the final countdown to the death of Paul Hill, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the 1994 murder of an abortion doctor and his security escort.
"We are very concerned about a backlash against abortion providers," said Ms Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, whose 400 facilities account for half of America's annual 1.2 million abortions. "We are concerned that we'll see another murder, an arson, a bombing." The problem is being taken seriously in the light of a series of anonymous death threats mailed to Florida state officials last week, urging against the execution and containing bullets from high-powered rifles.
In addition, there have been a number of Internet warnings from religious extremists.
"These are people who believe it's 'justifiable murder' to kill abortion providers and have encouraged others to do so," Ms Saporta said. "These threats need to be taken very seriously because these people have demonstrated that they will murder to advance their beliefs." Some anti-abortion groups have joined with anti-death penalty activists to call for Hill's sentence to be commuted to life without parole, saying his death would fulfil his wish to become a martyr.
In July 1994 Hill gunned down John Britton (69), and his security man and driver, outside a Pensacola abortion clinic. The father of three children then laid down his weapon and waited to be arrested. At trial he attempted to use the defence of "justifiable homicide", saying that by killing the pair he had saved thousands of unborn children from being aborted. The court threw out that defence and thereafter he stood mute during the trial. He has not appealed his conviction.
"I think I can save more people dead than alive," he said after his conviction nine years ago, claiming that Jesus would have done the same.
His actions proved an inspiration to the anti-abortion movement's lunatic fringe. In 1998, his fellow militant James Kopp, known in anti-abortion circles as "Atomic Dog", shot dead Barnett Slepian (52), a doctor from Buffalo. He was sentenced this year to 25 years in jail without parole.
Dr Britton's widow supports the death penalty, but his stepdaughter said: "Violence begets violence."- (Guardian Service)