Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, August 2, 1994                   TAG: 9408020109
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

ABORTION CLINICS GUARDED

``We're trying to take all prudent steps, using all the federal tools, including the clinic access legislation, to appropriately address an issue of deep concern to this nation,'' Attorney General Janet Reno said.

Violence at clinics ``has now occurred twice in one city,'' Reno told reporters before meeting law enforcement executives. ``It is a problem throughout the nation.''

She was referring to the killing in Pensacola, Fla., of Dr. David Gunn as he arrived to work at an abortion clinic in March 1993 and the killing there last Friday of Dr. John B. Britton and his escort, James H. Barrett, as they arrived at another abortion clinic.

Defenders of abortion rights, including two dozen who picketed the Justice Department, renewed pressure Monday for an aggressive federal investigation of links between those three killings and other clinic-worker shootings they believe are the work of a conspiracy.

They want Reno to use the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994, which makes it a crime to obstruct, intentionally injure or intimidate anyone trying to obtain an abortion. In death cases, it carries a top penalty of life in prison.

Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, whose ``Impeach Clinton'' bus pulled up at the Justice Department during the abortion rights picketing, condemned the clinic murder but called it ``ludicrous to have marshals out because of two or three murders when there are hundreds of thousands of crack houses.''

``Their call for a full federal investigation ... is ... designed to terrorize average Americans in the pro-life movement,'' Terry said.

Reno refused to say how many clinics and marshals are involved, but a federal law enforcement source, who declined to be identified by name, put the number of protected sites in the dozens.

Over the weekend, pairs of deputy U.S. marshals began sitting in marked vehicles outside the clinics. They were spotted at two Pensacola clinics; a Melbourne, Fla., clinic involved in a Supreme Court decision limiting anti-abortion picketing; the Fargo, N.D., clinic that performs the only abortions in the state; a clinic in Falls Church, Va.; and a clinic in Wichita, Kan., site of massive protests in 1991 and the wounding of a doctor last year.