They opened their mail last week and found flyers targeting abortion doctors

Shari Rudavsky | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption Supreme Court backs California anti-abortion pregnancy centers The Supreme Court has ruled that a California law requiring anti-abortion pregnancy centers to provide information on access to abortion facilities is unconstitutional.

Anti-abortion activists recently blanketed two Indianapolis neighborhoods with flyers to tell people living there that one of their neighbors is a doctor who performs abortions.

The flyers were produced in conjunction with a national conference held this week in Indianapolis by an organization that seeks to abolish legal abortion. About 200 to 300 members of Dallas-based Operation Save America will attend the conference, said James Farrar, pastor of the Aletheia Church on the southside, a local church that is helping host the event.

In advance of the gathering, Operation Save America sent out a few hundred mailers to neighbors of two doctors who work at Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky clinics and perform abortions that included the doctors’ names and home addresses.

“This was intended to let the neighborhood know that someone in their neighborhood makes their living by killing children,” Farrar said. “We hope that we would generate pressure from neighbors like an awareness campaign, so people realize that these people are living right around you.”

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Neighbors who received the mailer said that it did not come as news to them that one of their neighbors worked at Planned Parenthood.

The doctor and his family are mainstays of the neighborhood, said Lilia Judson who lives on the Northwestside and received one of the mailers late last week.

The mailer arrived in plain envelopes with no return address, added Judson, who said she looked for one in the hope of responding.

“They did not have the decency to put a return address on either of the envelops, so they don’t mind bothering folks in their homes or in their neighborhoods but they don’t have the gall to put their own location on the envelopes,” she said. “These folks I think have caused a lot of animus to themselves because this is a very nice neighborhood…. “They can go downtown and protest all they want, we don’t want them in our neighborhood.”

It is not uncommon for Planned Parenthood employees to find themselves targeted in such a fashion, though it may happen more often to those in the Midwest, said Christie Gillespie, PPINK president and chief executive officer.

Both of these doctors have been targeted several times previously, as recently as last fall.

In addition to extensive safety and security protocols that are part of standard operating procedure for PPINK, people who work at the organization’s clinics receive training for situations such as this, Gillespie said.

“Much of the training is letting people know what to expect and what could possibly happen because frankly people don’t expect when they go to work that they will be targeted in this manner at their home,” she said. “You assume that your home is a place of sanctuary and you won’t be targeted…. Our employees are targeted in ways that are very personal. Publicizing someone’s home address is at best inappropriate behavior.”

Last November Operation Save America protested outside a home that Gillespie had once owned. However, Gillespie had sold the home earlier in the year to a family with young children.

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At times, the tactic has dissuaded former employees. A few years ago, for instance, a nurse practitioner at the PPINK clinic in Fort Wayne resigned after anti-abortion activists targeted her. The clinic recently closed after intimidation and harassment from local activists.

Since 1993 when the first abortion provider was killed, 10 others have been murdered and 26 have had attempts made on their lives, according to the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers.

Operation Save America does not advocate violence, Farrar said. Every person who attends the conference signs a pledge of non-violence.

“We are pro-life. We believe that people have a right to live. ... In the entire history of OSA, there’s never been a case where OSA has ever been prosecuted or been violent towards anyone,” he said.

Call IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at 317-444-6354. Follow her on Twitter: @srudavsky.