When Christian abortion providers are targeted for harassment

A few years after Howard Stephens started providing abortions, he became the target of local anti-abortion protesters. They picketed his home on weekends, distributed leaflets around his neighborhood calling him a murderer, followed his moves around town, and sent hate mail to his son.

Perhaps most concerning, the protesters picketed Howard’s church twice. On the day of the second demonstration, the protesters lined the street for about an hour and a half with 60 or 70 people holding anti-abortion signs. Howard, who received word of the protest before it started, stayed home from church that day, but was deeply affected by the way the protesters disrupted his church as a way to target him.

Howard is not alone. Over the past four years, we have interviewed almost 90 abortion providers around the country about their experiences being individually targeted by abortion opponents, and we learned that abortion providers are frequently targeted for harrassment based on their faith. This type of harassment flips the script of common beliefs about abortion in this country. Many abortion providers draw on their religion as motivation for being involved in abortion care, and many anti-abortion extremists then harass and terrorize those providers using the provider’s religious belief as the basis.