NOW Urges Boycott to Press Pensacola to Protect Clinics

The National Organization for Women has called for an economic boycott of Pensacola if the city does not establish protection around its two abortion clinics.

Two doctors and an unarmed escort have been shot to death outside Pensacola clinics since March, 1993.

“Part of what’s missing in Pensacola is the political will to stop this violence,” NOW president Patricia Ireland said.

The group’s national board on Sunday unanimously approved a boycott of Pensacola as “a last resort.” The board did not discuss details of the boycott, did not set a deadline and did not mention what other steps it would first take to persuade the city to adopt a buffer-zone ordinance.

The boycott still would have to be approved by NOW’s executive committee.

A buffer-zone ordinance would reserve an area in front of the clinics that abortion protesters could not enter.

Pensacola Mayor John Fogg said the City Council was not opposed to such a law, but wasn’t sure it could pass legal muster. Courts have disagreed about the constitutionality of such zones, although the U.S. Supreme Court in July upheld one in Melbourne, Fla.

“We know that if the City Council passes a buffer zone, it is certainly going to be challenged up to the Supreme Court, and it is going to cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars” to defend, Fogg said.

He said the threatened boycott would not sway the city’s decision.

“This community, like any other, cannot be held hostage by NOW,” he said.

NOW’s vote comes in response to the July 29 slayings of Dr. John Bayard Britton and his escort, James Barrett, outside the Ladies Center clinic. Barrett’s wife, June, was wounded in the attack.

Former Presbyterian minister Paul Hill, 40, awaits trial.

On Monday, a jury was selected to hear disorderly conduct and noise charges against Hill in another case. He is accused of disrupting the Ladies Center on June 17 by loudly shouting such statements as “Please don’t kill your innocent child” and “Mommy, mommy, why can’t you love me?”

In March, 1993, Dr. David Gunn was shot to death outside the city’s other clinic. Michael F. Griffin is serving a life sentence.