Operation Rescue sets up shop across the street from Dr. Carhart

From RH Reality Check comes word that Operation Rescue, the extreme anti-choice organization that leads protests against clinics that perform abortions, along with Maryland Coalition for Life, has rented the building across the street from Dr. Carhart’s clinic.

Dr. Leroy Carhart, who recently opened his clinic in Maryland, is one of the only doctors in the US who still performs late term abortions, a list that used to include his friend and colleague Dr. George Tiller. The Germantown clinic is already the target of anti-choice protesters and sidewalk stalkers, and this new move means that’s only going to get worse. From The Washington Post:

Operation Rescue and the Maryland Coalition for Life celebrated their new lease, saying in a statement that their priority is to be a “referral and resource center for women considering abortion (early or late-term) and for women who have already made that tragic and costly decision.” The space will also “be used as a place of prayer for pro-life supporters,” the groups said…

“Locating an office like this across from the most notorious late-term abortionist in the country was a high priority for us. We wanted to do more than just ask women not to abort their babies. We wanted to provide them with practical assistance, spiritual guidance and true friendship so that abortion would no longer be a consideration. This office will do all of that,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.

The organizations are saying this won’t be a crisis pregnancy center. Except it sounds exactly like a crisis pregnancy center. Fake anti-choice clinics regularly pop up across the street from clinics providing reproductive health care that includes abortion in an attempt to trick patients into going to the anti-choice establishment instead of seeking real and unbiased medical care. It also sounds like the building will be used as a staging ground for protests that are anything but peaceful (link is triggering and bullshit).

I don’t give a damn what Operation Rescue says in their public statements — the murder of Dr. Tiller was the culmination of their long campaign against him, a campaign that led to Bill O’Reilly repeatedly referring to him as “Tiller the Baby Killer” on TV, a campaign that painted him as a murderer and created the climate where Scott Roeder thought he was doing God’s work by gunning Dr. Tiller down in his own church. The increased targeting of Dr. Carhart is quite frankly terrifying.