Operation Save America can seem more like a farce than a threat. Yet for abortion-rights advocates, it's both. On the surface, Benham's Mississippi sojourn didn't look victorious. There were, at most, a few hundred demonstrators in Jackson. The daily protests at the Jackson Women's Health Organization created a constant, low-level state of emergency among the clinic's staff, intimidated many of the patients, and added to the anxiety that plagues doctors living with the omnipresent threat of violence. But it was a far cry from the 1990s, when the group, then known as Operation Rescue, brought tens of thousands of protesters to cities like Wichita and Buffalo, where they tried, and sometimes succeeded, in physically shutting clinics down.
Lately, though, the tension has been rising. The same day as Benham's rally at the Capitol, protesters descended on the block of Dr. Joseph Booker, a gynecologist at the Jackson Women's Health Organization, for the first time in 10 years. They went door to door, ringing bells and telling people their neighbor was a baby killer. A few weeks before, protesters led by Benham showed up at the Raleigh, N.C., home of Susan Hill, owner of the Jackson Women's Health Organization. It was the first time that had ever happened. Soon Hill started receiving death threats. "We worry that they're being emboldened," Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation and a longtime friend of Hill's, said of militant antiabortion activists. "There does seem to be an increase in activity and harassment."
Betty Thompson, former director of the Jackson Women's Health Organization, noted that someone has rented an apartment across the street from the clinic as a base for protesters. "I think they feel they have the power," she said. "All eyes are on Mississippi now."
Thompson retired from the clinic in 2004 due to health problems; these days, she's a consultant. She's a warm, 58-year-old black woman whose work has been inspired by the misery she endured when she got pregnant as a 16-year-old high school student in a small Mississippi town. She had the baby and today adores her grown son. But she still wishes she'd had a choice. "It was a real tough time, a real tough time," she said, recalling the anger of her family and the ostracism of her peers. "It's too hard on the woman, too, too hard. So you're either on the side of the fetus or the side of the woman."
A decade ago, there were six clinics in Mississippi, but the combination of constant harassment and onerous state regulations led one after another to shut down; since 2004, Jackson Women's Health Organization has been alone. "They're using the tactics of a war of attrition," Smeal said. "What you do is you [attack] in the hinterlands, don't hit them in their strong point until you become so strong that you can penetrate it. So they target, and then they move on. Close that clinic, move to the next. It's a classic strategy."
The Jackson Women's Health Organization won't fall easily. Hill and Booker are every bit as committed as Benham and his crew are. Hill owns five clinics throughout the country and is used to being on constant alert. Over the years, her facilities have been subjected to 17 arsons or fire bombings, as well as butyric acid attacks and anthrax threats. One of the doctors who worked for her, David Gunn, was murdered. "Fortunately we've been safer in the last few years for whatever reasons," Hill said. "Thank God there haven't been the shootings. But there is a feeling that things are ramping up. The protesters are more vocal -- they're screaming, not just protesting, more like they were in the late '80s."
By and large, the people who've shown up in Jackson have not been as belligerent as their rhetoric. Historically, though, the doctors who've been targeted by protests have been the ones most likely to be assaulted or killed by extremists. "All we can say is, when protests at a clinic go up, that's when there tends to be a shooting," Smeal said. Many of the abortion providers who've been shot, including George Tiller in Wichita, Kan., John Britton in Pensacola, Fla., and Barnett Slepian in Buffalo, N.Y., had been subjects of repeated demonstrations and threats. Their names were put on hit lists, and wanted posters and information about them circulated throughout the violent wing of the antiabortion movement.
Booker is one of the gynecologists who've been singled out by militant antiabortion forces. He's been stalked repeatedly, and during the 1990s, he was put under the protection of federal marshals. "We were very fearful he was going to be killed," Smeal said.
Booker had a police escort during the recent protests, but if he's afraid, he won't admit it. A 62-year-old black man with a trim, white-streaked mustache and goatee, and a stud in his left ear, Booker said the harassment has been increasing, but he dismissed the protesters as "more bark than bite. If you don't dont get intimidated, they get frustrated and don't show up as much." Raised on the poor outskirts of Pittsburgh and educated in San Francisco, Booker described himself as "a Yankee, pro-choice, outspoken and black. And that's a bad combination in Mississippi." He added, "You don't mess with a ghetto person and think they're going to back down."
The doctor said he has a "deep passion in my heart" for a woman's right to chose. He was in medical school in 1973 and recalled doing a rotation at the San Francisco General emergency room. "I saw a lady come through who had an illegal abortion," he said. "And when you see a lady come through who is hemorrhaging, who has a fever of 104 or 105, has severe peritonitis because she had her uterus punctured, that's a sight you don't forget." Nothing the protesters can do, he insisted, will close down the Jackson Women's Health Organization. "There's too much spirit by me, and too much spirit by Susan Hill. We are both fighters, we've both been through the wars. They thought we'd be closed down this week because we're afraid of them, but they don't know me and they don't know Susan."
Next page: Even under its current laws, Mississippi is a harbinger of an America without choice