All of the doctor's neighbors within two or three blocks of the doctor's North Oakland home have been receiving letters accusing their neighbor of "perpetuating the American Holocaust" and "bringing the shame of bloodguilt on [the] neighborhood." (SFist is not going to name the doctor in this post, though some of the articles linked to do.) The doctor is being targeted because he/she flies to Kansas for one week a month to work at a local clinic in Wichita. (As of 2000, Kansas only had seven abortion providers, located in only 4% of its counties -- in large part because of a sizable anti-choice presence in the state.)

The doctor's neighbors have rallied around their neighbor (it is North Oakland, after all, and the doctor sounds like a very good neighbor too), and Oakland Counselwoman Jane Brunner is leading an effort to attempt to get an injunction in place to stop Operation Rescue from harassing Oakland residents. State and federal officials have also been contacted. The FBI has taken the position that the letters currently fall within the ambit of free speech, though they are monitoring the situation.

Operation Rescue's Wichita representative Troy Newman says, "[The doctor] comes to our neighborhoods to kill babies, so we think it's appropriate to tell [the doctor's] neighbors what [he/she] does for a living. We feel it's just like notifying neighbors of a sex offender under Megan's Law." Newman, who would not confirm or deny whether his group was responsible for the letters, added, "I want the world to know that abortionists can't just go and hide in the godless, liberal San Francisco Bay Area. You can't hide."

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