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Paul Hill claims that before he killed Dr. John Britton and his clinic escort James Barrett, God told him to commit murder. On the morning of July 29, 1994, Hill, a former Presbyterian minister, waited with a shotgun ready for Britton and Barrett to arrive at the Pensacola (FL) Ladies Center reproductive health clinic. As they arrived, Hill fired numerous shots into their car, killing the two men and wounding Barrett's wife, June.
According to Hill, God accepts this kind of violence as justifiable homicide. Indeed, at the time of Hill's execution for the crime in September 2003, supporters gathered outside the prison, proclaiming that Hill would be rewarded in heaven for his acts of murder.
Florida has suffered persistent anti-abortion violence; it was the site of the first murder of an abortion provider, Dr. David Gunn, in 1993. According to the National Abortion Federation Violence and Disruption Statistics, in Florida alone, there were 20 violent attacks on clinics between 1993 and 2004. In the United States and Canada during the same period, there were 269 reports of violence carried out against abortion providers.
Incidents of clinic violence have decreased in the past few years, but Florida remains a hotbed of extremist activity. The Presidential Women's Center in Palm Beach was the site of a suspicious fire over the Fourth of July weekend. No one was injured and no arrests have been made in the case.
Britton was well aware of the dangers posed by violent extremists but persisted in providing quality reproductive health care despite threats to his life. In addition to his wife, he left behind five children. |
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