Jailed Antiabortion Activist Threatens Further Violence Against Providers In Wake Of Roeder Verdict

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Litigation / Medical Malpractice
Article Date: 04 Feb 2010 - 3:00 PDT

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In an e-mail obtained by the Associated Press on Tuesday, jailed antiabortion-rights activist Shelley Shannon said U.S. abortion providers will "continue to be stopped" through violent means despite last week's first-degree murder conviction of the man who shot Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, the AP/Washington Post reports.

FBI spokesperson Bridget Patton said Shannon's e-mail lacked the specificity required to open an investigation. "Any direct threat against a specific doctor or specific clinic facility would be fully addressed and would basically put us on alert but it would have to be a specific threat," she said.

Shannon, who shot and wounded Tiller in 1993, is serving a sentence in Minnesota for a series of clinic arsons. Her message was sent through the prison e-mail system's Web page to Dave Leach, an antiabortion-rights activist in Des Moines, Iowa.

Last week, Scott Roeder was found guilty for Tiller's shooting death at the doctor's church on May 31, 2009. Roeder also was convicted of two counts of aggravated assault for threatening church ushers with a gun after the shooting. Roeder faces a minimum sentence of life in prison. During the trial, Roeder's attorneys had argued that a voluntary manslaughter defense should be allowed because he believed he was saving unborn children by killing Tiller, but the judge denied the request, the AP/Post reports.

In her e-mail, Shannon claimed that the judge in Roeder's trial has been influenced by the media and abortion-rights advocates who argued that a voluntary manslaughter defense could lead to more violence and deaths among abortion providers. Shannon said, "Abortionists are killed because they are serial murders of innocent children who must be stopped, and they will continue to be stopped, even though [Roeder] didn't get a fair trial" (Hegeman, AP/Washington Post, 2/3).

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