The Anti-Abortion Campaign Against Dr. George Tiller

Since 1999, when he became the head of Operation Rescue, Newman has been determined to come up with a novel strategy to prove himself. So two years ago, he moved his family to Wichita with a single, shining goal: to shut down Women's Health Care Services. The clinic is run by a doctor named George Tiller, a lightning-rod figure in the abortion wars. Tiller's reputation for performing late-term abortions draws women from all over the world to his clinic — women whose unborn children have been diagnosed with genetic deformities or whose health makes childbearing dangerous. It also makes Tiller's clinic the perfect target for Newman's campaign of intimidation. "Wichita isn't big enough for George Tiller and me," Newman declared in a full-page ad he took out in a Catholic paper called The Wanderer.

There's only one problem: Tiller is a hard man to find, let alone intimidate. After more than a decade as one of the anti-abortion movement's favorite targets, he keeps a low profile, drives an armored car and lives in a gated community in a house with a state-of-the-art security system. More pointedly, he has made it clear that he's not susceptible to scare tactics. In 1993, Tiller was shot in both arms by an anti-abortion protester. He returned to work the next day.

Newman is well aware of Tiller's resilience. That's why Operation Rescue is going after clinic workers like Sara Phares. The employees have no guards posted at their homes, no cameras monitoring their yards. If Newman can provoke enough of them to quit, his job will be done. He'll effectively shut Tiller down.

Operation Rescue is headquartered in a converted trailer home separated from the railroad tracks by a chain-link fence. On the same lot is a Christian radio station; just across the tracks, there's a used-truck dealership and a seedy motel. The group's meeting space is a throwback to a Sixties rec room, complete with Barcaloungers and shag carpeting. On one wall hang Anne Geddes photos of babies frolicking among drifts of peonies. On another is a poster that reads, "Closed! San Diego Abortion Mills", with a checkerboard of photos depicting eighteen facilities that Operation Rescue worked to shut down. Square sixteen reads, "Tiller's Clinic Here".

When I arrive, Newman and his small staff of zealous pro-lifers are buzzing with the news that the clinic's office manager has quit — a result, they believe, of their name-and-shame campaign. The manager had been accosted by a neighbor in a grocery store who recognized her from an Operation Rescue flier that featured her photo. "You're that baby killer!" the neighbor screamed at her. Then Newman, through investigative methods he'd rather not reveal, discovered where the woman's husband works. "We think that's what clinched it," he says. "He probably realized we were going to picket his workplace. I imagine he's the major breadwinner in the family, and he didn't want to risk his job."

Newman shows me a fax from the National Abortion Federation advertising a job opening for an office manager at Women's Health Care Services. The fax was intercepted by a mole from Operation Rescue. Newman says he has them everywhere — including inside the clinic. "They're very, very quiet," he says. "Some of them even interface with clinic personnel on a daily basis." Most of Newman's informants approach him with unsolicited tips; one, for example, is a disgruntled former employee at the clinic. But Newman also casts around for them. He pulls out an ad from a Christian paper, the Wichita Chronicle. The ad reads, "Reward! for information leading to the arrest and conviction of abortionist George Tiller. Do you know of: Insurance fraud? Botched abortion? Tax evasion? Sexual harassment or rape? Substance abuse?" Informants, Newman says, are paid "upward of $100."

Newman and his staff have spent months compiling a list of more than 200 "abortion collaborators" — companies that do business with Women's Health Care Services and its employees. They plan to approach every firm on the list — from the guy who mows the clinic's lawn to the cafe that sells Tiller his morning latte — and lobby them to stop doing business with the facility. At the top of the collaborator list is Wesley Medical Center. Wesley is vital to Tiller's clinic: It's where his patients are taken if there is a medical emergency. Newman has written to Wesley's board of physicians to request that they retract hospital privileges for Tiller's patients. If they refuse, Newman plans to expose them as Tiller's accomplices: "We're thinking of taking out an ad in the local newspaper, naming Wesley's physicians and accusing them of supporting a baby killer."

The collaborator list is constantly growing. Just a few days earlier, Newman added a place called Elite Cleaners after his aide-de-camp, Cheryl Sullenger — who spent two and a half years in federal prison for conspiracy to fire-bomb a clinic — spotted Tiller's wife, Jeanne, turning into a strip mall near her house. Sullenger drove in behind her. As Jeanne got out of her SUV in front of Elite, Sullenger snapped a couple of photographs of her.