Anthrax threats have brought a new fear to many Americans, but the anxiety is familiar to abortion clinics. Clinics had experienced this form of bioterrorism before some people had even heard of Osama bin Laden.
Abortion offices nationwide — including Portland’s Planned Parenthood clinic — have received bogus anthrax mail since 1998. And as the anthrax scare has spread up and down the East Coast in the last few weeks, the clinics have been one of the biggest targets for anthrax hoaxes.
More than 130 suspicious letters have been sent to 49 Planned Parenthood Federation affiliates in 16 states and the District of Columbia, Eugene Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Kitty Piercy said. The envelopes — which have preprinted return addresses from the U.S. Marshals Service or the Secret Service — contain unidentified powdery substances and threatening letters, she said.
So far, all substances have tested negative.
“For them to do this at a time when we should all be working together against terrorism is really reprehensible,” Piercy said.
Although U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has condemned anthrax hoaxes and promised the prosecution of guilty parties, Planned Parenthood leaders have expressed some skepticism. Piercy, who is a former Oregon state representative, said clinics never got an adequate response from government officials in the past.
“We have been experiencing domestic terrorism for quite a long time,” Piercy said. “We believe the public should demand the country respond as strongly to domestic terrorism as national terrorism.”
Portland FBI Spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said she could not discuss the details of the investigation. But she said the department had information that abortion clinics could be potential targets of anthrax threats.
“The FBI did warn abortion clinics all over the country when the threat was first realized,” she said. “A warning went out to clinics to be on the alert for anything suspicious.”
She added that the FBI did not prosecute anyone for sending anthrax threats to abortion clinics in the past.
At least 132 National Abortion Federation affiliates have also received the mail. Because membership in NAF and Planned Parenthood doesn’t completely overlap, representatives believe more than 200 clinics were targeted.
Many of the messages are signed by “the Army of God,” a radical Christian anti-abortion group that has taken credit for several clinic bombings and murders of abortion doctors. The letters include statements such as “You’ve been exposed to anthrax. We will kill you all.”
Although states on the west coast have received such mail in the past, none have gotten anthrax threats after Sept. 11. But Portland Planned Parenthood representative Don Skinner said after the “rash” of anthrax mail in 1998 and 1999, all clinics have developed a protocol for responding to suspicious deliveries.
“We’re being vigilant about what comes in,” he said. “(The Army of God members) are people who have embraced violence as a means for achieving their end.”
Last week, the Army of God spokesman, Rev. Donald Spitz of Chesapeake, Va., told the L.A. Times that the flood of threatening mail to clinics is a “good thing” and a “brilliant move.”
But Spitz denied knowing where the mail is coming from.
Piercy said the Eugene Planned Parenthood office has never received anthrax threats but is being cautious. She added that the threats will not stop clinics from doing their work.
“The best way to fight this is to not let it keep us from going to work and providing the kind of health care women in this community and all over the country need,” she said.