In Brookline, a lot has changed since a gunman opened fire at two clinics 25 years ago. But there is still more to come.

He walked in and double-checked he was in the right place. Then John Salvi III pulled out his rifle and fired.

Officers were already en route to Preterm Health Services to warn of an earlier shooting at the Planned Parenthood down the street. Instead they found a second crime scene.

“We were going up there to make sure everyone was safe, and we got in right when Salvi was running up the side street, according to the witnesses,” recalled Jill Riley Cullinane, then a Brookline police detective. “We got there just five minutes too late, unfortunately.”

By day’s end on Dec. 30, 1994, Salvi had murdered two people, injured five and shocked the nation in one of the most infamous shootings targeting American abortion clinics.

A quarter century later, Brookline is down to two clinics and the crowds of protesters — once 50, 75, 100 deep — have slowly faded. But for all the changes over the intervening years, there is still much to do to provide access to reproductive healthcare, community members say.

‘Abortion Row’

For a time in the 1990s, there were three reproductive health clinics located on Brookline’s Beacon Street. Anti-abortion activists called it “Abortion Row.”

On that fateful morning in 1994, Planned Parenthood receptionist Shannon Lowney, 25, died at one end of that stretch — 1031 Beacon St. — and Preterm receptionist Lee Ann Nichols, 38, was shot and killed at the other — 1842 Beacon St. Salvi was captured in Virginia after opening fire on another clinic. He was convicted and died in prison in 1996.

One of the first responders to reach Preterm, Cullinane remembers the shaken witnesses.

“They were traumatized, but they were also in fear of being identified for being there,” she recalled. “I remember wondering, ‘God, I wonder how many people are going to go home and not even share with anyone the trauma that they experienced.’”

Part of it was the climate surrounding abortion access at the time. In the 22 months prior to the Brookline attacks, there had been three other fatal shootings at clinics around the country.

Clinic protests were common; In 1991, more than 200 members of anti-abortion group Operation Rescue were arrested for blockading Preterm and Repro Associates, another Brookline clinic located on Beacon Street, according to a June 2, 1991 Boston Globe article.

“I remember being surprised that [a shooting] would happen in Brookline, but having worked in reproductive rights and abortion access for years at that point, I knew that violence at clinics and aimed at abortion providers was already too common an occurrence,” said Rebecca Stone, a Town Meeting member who did not live in Brookline at the time.

A turning point for protesters, she said, was Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a landmark 1992 U.S. Supreme Court case which declared that abortion restrictions should be judged by a less rigorous “undue burden” standard.

“That was a huge win for the anti-abortion movement; in my view that decision changed everything about how the fight for reproductive rights would be fought. And I believe it emboldened the opposition,” Stone said. “Add to that the extraordinary access to guns, and you get clinic violence.”

New normal

For some time after the Brookline shootings, “it was chaos,” said Brookline Police Lt. Paul Cullinane.

“We put special attention on the clinics for quite a while after that, so I would say it didn’t really return to normal ever, because after that period we just had to change the way we did business with the clinics,” he said.

Things changed on the protest side as well: Cardinal Bernard Law, then Boston’s archbishop, called for a moratorium on clinic demonstrations. The ban was met with both praise and condemnation nationwide, and was lifted five months later.

Legislation has also changed the nature of clinic protests. According to both state and federal law, individuals may not impede access to reproductive health clinics. The federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 (which went into effect before the shootings) also prohibits the intentional property damage of a clinic.

In 2000, Massachusetts created a floating buffer zone, keeping protesters 6 feet away from anyone within 18 feet of a clinic. In 2007, the state enacted a 35-foot buffer zone from clinic entrances. The U.S. Supreme Court struck it down in 2014, ruling that the law was an infringement upon anti-abortion activists’ First Amendment rights.

Today

These days, demonstrators still congregate outside Brookline’s Women’s Health Services, located on Harvard Street. (Preterm and Planned Parenthood merged and moved to a new clinic on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue in 1996.)

Anti-abortion activists are typically not aggressive in Brookline, said Lt. Paul Cullinane, who acts as a police liaison to Women’s Health. “Protests are a lot less common,” he said. “It’s more like sidewalk counseling. More prayer vigils.”

Massachusetts Citizens for Life, which operates at the state level and describes itself as a pro-life organization, focuses on lobbying and educating women about options outside of abortion, according to MCFL President Myrna Maloney Flynn.

The organization is also opposed to any form of violence used to further the cause, she said. “Massachusetts Citizens for Life values and seeks to protect all life, born and preborn,” Flynn said. “We believe that love and loving words are far more effective at saving the lives of women and their babies than callous actions or disrespectful rhetoric.”

Nationwide, however, instances of violence at abortion providers have more than doubled since the 1990s, according to data from the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers. There were 1,945 violent incidents reported at clinics from 1990 through 1999, compared to 3,991 incidents from 2010 through 2018, the NAF reported.

And in 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in June Medical Services v. Gee, which abortion-rights activists say could potentially chip away at access.

Dr. Cornelia van der Ziel, a retired OB/GYN and Town Meeting member, said she worries what will happen if abortion rights are diminished.

“I went to medical school in the late 60s and 70s, and I saw what it was like when abortion was illegal. You know, there were women dying from these things,” van der Ziel said. “I was in New York City in medical school and in the early 1970s, … about half of the women in the GYN beds in the hospitals were there because of the aftereffects of illegal abortions.”

Even in Massachusetts, there’s still work to be done, said Jane Piercy, a Brookline resident and reproductive freedom activist.

“I think many people assume that all women have adequate access to care in Massachusetts,” Piercy said. “Remembering these shootings reminds us that we must remain vigilant and keep fighting for safe and accessible access to reproductive healthcare here in the Commonwealth.”

The ROE Act, which is pending in the state legislature, “will eliminate barriers that force women to travel out of our state for care,” Piercy said.

Some things haven’t changed since the shootings: Gun violence, inflammatory rhetoric and threats to legal abortion still persist, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts President and CEO Dr. Jennifer Childs-Roshak said in a statement. PPLM’s work pays tribute to Lowney and Nichols by “providing compassionate care and building a community in which every patient feels safe, supported, and welcome,” she said.

“Everyone deserves access to health care without threats of violence, harassment, or shame and our commitment to providing nonjudgmental care to our patients is unwavering,” Childs-Roshak said. “Our doors stay open — no matter what.”