NAF Staff in the Field: Protecting our Members in Alabama

This week in Birmingham, Alabama, anti-abortion group Operation Save America (OSA) will be protesting at Planned Parenthood and the New Woman All Women clinic. New Woman All Women was the clinic that was bombed by convicted murderer Eric Robert Rudolph in 1998. An off duty police officer, employed as a security guard, was killed and a nurse, Emily Lyons, was brutally and permanently injured.

A staff member from the National Abortion Federation (NAF) is on the ground in Birmingham working with law enforcement and clinic staff in order to ensure that patients have safe access to abortion care and that services are unimpeded. Please visit our blog this week to read our reports “from the field.”

Update 1

Members of OSA began gathering for their annual week-long protest event in Birmingham, Alabama on Saturday. This morning was their first day protesting at the city’s two abortion clinics. About 15 people demonstrated at Planned Parenthood, while about 100 gathered at the New Woman All Women clinic. Protesters carried graphic signs and shouted at clinic staff and law enforcement. Trucks, also bearing graphic signs, drove throughout the city, provoking numerous calls from concerned citizens who complained about the trucks. The group then gathered in the 5 Points neighborhood and held a rally and signing of an “emancipation proclamation for the unborn children of our land.” There was a visible law enforcement presence at all the venues. Despite the disruption, the clinics both remained open and cared for their patients.