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No longer legally allowed to blockade abortion clinics, Operation Rescue, a group of radical anti‐choice protesters, has resorted to a new strategy in its efforts to shut down Women’s Health Care Services in Wichita: systematic harassment of clinic employees and companies doing business with the clinic.
Operation Rescue subjects clinic workers to relentless attacks. The group rummages through employees’ home garbage, follows employees while they run errands, pickets them at restaurants, and mails hundreds of postcards to their neighbors—providing personal information and encouraging the neighbors to harass them into quitting their jobs. Operation Rescue also stages protests in front of clinic employees’ homes, parking a tractor‐trailer plastered with pictures of dismembered fetuses outside and displaying posters with personal employee information.
Additionally, Operation Rescue has compiled a list of more than 200 so‐called “abortion collaborators”—companies that do business with the clinic and its employees. Using information gathered from rummaging through garbage and stalking employees, the group approaches each company and attempts to convince it to sever its relationship with the clinic and its employees. If the company fails to agree to the group’s demands, Operation Rescue threatens to picket the business in an effort to create a city‐wide boycott.
Additionally, Wichita, KS is also the home of Dr. George Tiller, who was shot in both his arms outside a Wichita abortion clinic.