Abortion Clinic Boss Dons Bullet-Proof Vest; Uses Decoys

Abortion Clinic Boss Dons Bullet-Proof Vest; Uses Decoys


Kristina Romero is just one of the many abortion providers across the country who deals with risks, from stalking to her children's lives being threatened, say David S. Cohen and Krysten Connon in this excerpt from "Living in the Crosshairs."



(WOMENSENEWS)--Kristina Romero has worked in the field of reproductive health care for over three decades. She started as a receptionist in a clinic that did not perform abortions and is now a regional director for multiple clinics, a small subset of which offers abortion services. Her clinics serve people from urban, suburban and rural parts of her politically conservative West South Central state. Though Kristina is responsible for many clinics, her home base is a clinic in the same suburban college town where she has spent her entire career.

Kristina did not experience much protest until the clinic began performing abortions in the late 1990s. Before then, the clinic where she worked provided basic family planning services and was rarely targeted. "No protesting. Nothing. We were just providing family planning, and the protesters maybe didn't like that, but it didn't motivate them."

[Living in the Crosshairs: The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism] When the clinic decided to start offering abortion care, Kristina's nearly 20 years of peace and quiet working in family planning clinics came to an end. Kristina's "under the radar" clinic was transformed into a focal point for local anti-abortion sentiment. The anti-abortion protest was instantaneous: "When we did our first abortion, which the protesters figured out before we were done with construction of the clinic, they were outside waiting." The new level of protest bothered Kristina's employees, and the first group of them, who had been working with Kristina for years, could "only take so much" and eventually left.

Over time, the protesters began using tactics both to shame patients and to target the clinic's employees. The protesters stand at the entrance to the clinic's parking lot and badger the patients when they come in. "They get screamed at. The protesters write down their license plates. They send them cards. They make phone calls to their homes."

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http://womensenews.org/story/books/150517/abortion-clinic-boss-dons-bullet-proof-vest-uses-decoys-0