BY ABBY TILSNER
ATLANTA - In the week before the 24th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, two abortion clinics were bombed.

On January 16 the Northside Family Planning Services Clinic in Sandy Springs, Georgia, just north of Atlanta, was hit by two bombs, one hour apart, that injured seven people. The first exploded at 9:30 a.m. and damaged the operating room, waiting room, and counseling room. Only three workers and no patients were in the clinic at the time, and no one was injured. The second explosion went off in a trash bin in the parking lot at 10:30, as fire fighters, cops, and reporters who had rushed to the scene milled about. Seven men suffered injuries, including one who was hospitalized overnight.

The same clinic was bombed in 1984, when it was at a different location. At that time two firebombs exploded within two weeks at separate clinics in the area. No one was injured and no one was ever arrested for the attacks.

The second recent bombing occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the Reproductive Services clinic. Two bombs exploded there January 19; no one was injured. The same clinic had suffered mild smoke and fire damage from two Molotov cocktails January 1. The Planned Parenthood clinic in Tulsa was also recently bombed, on Sept. 18 and 21, 1996.

The Georgia Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League called a rally and press conference to protest the clinic bombings at City Hall for January 22, the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling.

In addition, the Atlanta Militant Labor Forum altered its scheduled program, a commemoration of Roe v. Wade, to a speak out, and sent out a press release with a statement condemning the bombing. Channel 46 WGNX News covered the forum on the 11 o'clock news. Speaker Salm Kolis, a member of the Socialist Workers Party and United Auto Workers, stated, "Antiabortion forces can't win by reasoned debate, so they resort to violence to intimidate and terrorize women from asserting their constitutional right to abortion, and doctors from performing them. We should learn from the history of the fight to legalize abortion. Working people have a stake in defending this important democratic right. The way to defend it is to mobilize, get out into the streets and demonstrate, to demand that those responsible are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

During the program she encouraged participants to attend protest actions and to help explain the importance of the right of women to control their bodies.

The Feminist Majority had called a January 16 press conference in Washington, D.C., before news of the bombing, to report a survey that of 312 abortion clinics around the country 30 percent reported acts of violence in 1996, compared to 39 percent in 1995.

Ann Glazier, the director of Planned Parenthood's clinic defense organization, told the Washington press conference, "We were saying acts were down slightly last year, but were still high enough to be unacceptable." The Atlanta bombing was designed "to send a message of fear to the community," she said. "They've been unsuccessful in frightening women away from clinics. They're ratcheting it up a notch to scare people."

Just in the past month a doctor was stabbed outside a clinic in New Orleans; a Planned Parenthood office in Dallas was robbed at gunpoint; a Phoenix, Arizona, clinic was the site of three arson attempts; and the clinic in Tulsa was burned.

Atlanta Mayor William Campbell sent police officers to the city's nine abortion clinics the day of the bombing for extra security.

Federal investigators said January 20 that they do not believe there is a connection between the Sandy Springs and Tulsa bombings, nor of the Tulsa bombings with the Planned Parenthood bombings last September.

Local Atlanta television on the day of the Sandy Springs bombing repeatedly stated that the style of bombing - two bombs set off one hour apart - was the style used by the Irish Republican Army and groups from the Middle East.

Editorials and articles in the Atlanta Journal Constitution have described these bombings as "domestic terrorism" and suggested the target could have been the rescue workers who rushed to the scene, not the clinic itself.

Meanwhile, there have been other probes against abortion rights. In New York, Federal judge John Sprizzo ruled January 13 that George Lynch and Christopher Moscinski committed no crime when they blocked access to a clinic that provides abortions in Dobbs Ferry, New York, because they were motivated by "conscience-driven religious beliefs." The two members of Operation Rescue, who had been arrested more than 20 times for their antiabortion actions, had been charged with contempt of court for violating an injunction against blocking the driveway to the Dobbs Ferry clinic. In letting them off, Sprizzo cited a 1970 Supreme Court decision in favor of a Vietnam War conscientious objector. Randi Fallor, the director of the clinic, asked, "Is it O.K. for them now to block our door? For them to place bombs in the clinic? For them to shoot us, as long as they're sincere in their moral beliefs?"

A new bill to ban so-called partial birth abortion was introduced into the Senate January 17, the day after the Sandy Springs bombing. Similar legislation passed in Congress last year but was vetoed.  
 
 
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