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| Omaha Weekly Reader, January 23, 2003 http://www.thereader.com
 When I pulled my car into the parking
lot of the small, dank-looking building, a friendly boy in a bright orange
security vest waited to escort me into the clinic. As we ascended the stairs
leading to the building’s entrance, a woman bobbing her head over the
clinic’s privacy fence beckoned to me, "Mom, Mom, please don’t kill
your baby, Mom. We are here to help you. Mom, please talk to me. Mom, I’m
praying for you."I opened the door and took my first step into the Abortion and Contraceptive Clinic of Nebraska. Inside the small hallway was a window with an opening large enough to slide an ID through and nothing more. Within moments a woman ushered me into a small room near the entrance. I was asked repeatedly whom I worked for and what my intentions were. Another woman walked by me holding a phonebook. Only after my position as a newspaper reporter was confirmed did Dr. LeRoy Carhart enter the room while rubbing his eyes sleepily. He shook my hand. "I live on a farm. It was quite an effort getting here today," said Carhart. A snowy day is likely the least of this doctor's worries. Nearly 30 years ago Carhart started on a path leading to destruction, fear and ultimately an unwavering passion for women’s reproductive freedom, which he said is at greater risk today than when the landmark case Roe vs. Wade was decided on Jan. 22, 1973. Carhart is a slow and somewhat winding conversationalist, with names and dates flooding in and out of his memory. As someone who has lived the last 30 years of his life under siege, he is weary but unstoppable — and unapologetic. On Sept. 6, 1991 — the same day the Parental Notification Law requiring minors to acquire parental permission to receive an abortion went in to effect — Carhart’s home and stables with 17 horses, a cat and dog were destroyed by fire. Although he had been performing abortions for years, the fire acted as a catalyst, converting him from doctor to crusader. "When the fire took everything else away, that’s what changed me. It was a religious experience," Carhart said. "Providing abortions and teaching other physicians how to perform abortions is my life." Carhart said that the day after the fire he received a letter stating the insignificance of his loss compared to the unborn babies he had murdered. The letter was misplaced and the case was never officially ruled as arson, but a fire with seven different origins led Carhart to believe it was a deliberate act of intimidation. He has been called a murderer, a terrorist, and myriad other names. He seems to take it all in stride, making jokes, laughing about it and referring to the protesters collectively as the "anti’s" or the "idiots" and at one point calling them botched abortions. Understandably, some may perceive his words as hostile, but after having his name placed on the infamous Nuremberg Files hit list, contending with mounting legal bills to fight landlord evictions, Supreme Court battles, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and watching protestors question, videotape and photograph his patients, he has no desire to be delicate with his opinion. "The women who come here [the clinic] have gone through so much before they show up at my door," Carhart said. "They [the protesters] are professional idiots. They harass the patients and for that I truly despise them because there’s no patient that comes in this clinic that has not gone through tons and tons of mental agony to get here. It just doesn’t happen." Carhart became a household name in June 1997 when he filed a temporary restraining order to prevent the state of Nebraska from enforcing its ban on dilation-and-extraction (partial birth) abortion. He considered the ban not only unconstitutional but also one of the first steps taken by state government to create an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose an abortion. The District Court for the State of Nebraska agreed with Carhart and issued a permanent injunction. The State of Nebraska appealed the decision to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals and lost. The case was then taken to the Supreme Court where oral arguments were heard on April 27, 2000. On June 28, 2000, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that the Nebraska law and similar laws in 29 other states were unconstitutional. After the ruling Carhart released a statement that said in part, "I am proud that my name will be forever associated with a case that confirmed women’s health and lives cannot be sacrificed to an anti-choice political agenda." The battle was hardly over. That summer as Carhart ended one fight, another one was brewing. State Sen. Paul Hartnett, who tried and failed to pass legislation banning fetal tissue testing, was part of a triumvirate that purchased the building out of which Carhart’s abortion clinic operated, and started eviction proceedings. After nearly three years and $160,000 in legal fees, Hartnett’s lawyer approached Carhart’s lawyer at a Christmas party, offering a settlement of $50,000 and the building, Carhart said. On Dec. 30, 2002, Carhart became his own landlord. Between Supreme Court battles and eviction notices, Carhart was removed from his volunteer faculty position at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where he donated fetal tissue. The Board of Regents insisted the removal was part of restructuring volunteer faculty positions and had nothing to do with pressure the university was receiving from anti-abortion activists. Although reinstated, Carhart said it doesn’t make much difference because he has only been reinstated on paper. He accuses some members of the Board as using the fetal tissue controversy as a reelection opportunity. Carhart said that since his reinstatement, the Board has refused his offer to donate fetal tissue. Instead UNMC pays a $100 collection and processing fee to the Birth Defects Research Laboratory at the University of Washington at Seattle for each fetal tissue shipment. Tom O’Connor, UNMC spokesperson, didn’t comment on why the university no longer uses tissue offered by Carhart. Carhart also said they refused to let him organize a medical-students-for-choice group, refused his offer of abortion training, refused his offer to speak to medical students and hasn’t received a single staff meeting announcement. "Do I ever get tired of fighting? No. Do I wish we didn’t have to fight? Yes," Carhart said. A Republican, feminist, father, husband, grandfather, doctor, Methodist and retired airforce surgeon, Carhart is devoted to securing the future of reproductive rights for women in the United States. "As providers we have to spearhead a political revolution," Carhart said. In the early 90s Carhart expected then-President George Bush Sr. would be elected to a second term as president of the United States and with it would come the fall of Roe. He was part of a mass effort among abortion providers to train women how to perform the procedure on themselves, thus rendering the services available to women in all communities. "Our goal then was to train between 100,000 to 200,000 women how to perform abortions," Carhart said. "Performing an abortion is simple. The risk lies with the 1 percent that may have complications." He fears the United States is headed for a similar fate with George W. Bush in office, "Unless the American public wakes up I don’t think abortion will survive Bush’s second term. "If you’re not 44 years of age or older you don’t remember when women died in the hundreds every year from illegal abortions and probably 10 times that number were left sterile or severely debilitated due to emergency surgeries they had to have to save their lives. At least once or twice a month a woman came in with an infection so severe she wasn’t going to make it through the night and all you could do was make her comfortable," said Carhart as he recalled his medical residency in the 1960s. Last year 1,335 abortions were performed at Carhart’s clinic. He has received referral patients from South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado and even Canada. He has never performed an abortion past 22 weeks of conception and for security purposes hasn’t traveled alone in years. On several occasions while trying to have dinner with his family at a restaurant he was approached by a group of protesters calling him a murderer and a baby killer. The same small group of protesters, who often follow him, also passed out leaflets titled "Is there a killer on board" at Eppley Airport while Carhart waited for his flight. Many of Carhart’s protesters state they are acting out the will of God; Carhart believes he is doing the same. "Maybe it’s my faith in God that gives me the courage to go on because I truly believe we are doing the right thing," Carhart said. "I think there are certain risks in life that you have to make your mind up that you are willing to take and then take them. If I’m to die doing this then that’s God’s will, but until then I am doing what He wants me to do." When I left the clinic that day only one protester remained outside holding a 4-foot-by-3-foot sign — on one side was a photo of Christ praying; on the other what appeared to be a mutilated baby head was displayed with a pair of tongs. "This is life and death," said Larry Donlan, director of Rescue the Heartland, an anti-abortion group. "We aren’t here to make a point, we are here to intervene. These women have the right to know the truth. It’s not a glob of tissue. It’s a real baby. We have to restore sanity to our nation and once again have a prohibition on killing all human beings. We have allowed some 40 million people to be slaughtered through these abortion mills — boys and girls, men and women. It makes the Nazi Holocaust look like a picnic." Carhart's passion is fueled by more than just faith, as evidenced in his concluding statement after the Supreme Court ruled the Nebraska Dilation and Extraction ban unconstitutional: "Doing this work has taken enormous tolls on us, but standing up and fighting back is the only way I know how to rid the world of that scourge of anti-choice extremists, including government officials who are willing to lie, deceive and abuse their power to drive abortion out of existence."
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