While abortion doctors were being killed, pro-lifers prayed in support of the attackers

Photos of anti-abortion protests in the 1990s show what intolerance and religious fervor look like

Protesters demonstrate outside the Supreme Court as they wait for a ruling on Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, July 3, 1989. (Bettmann Archive via Getty Images)

There was a storm brewing above Florida State Prison on September 3, 2003, the day Paul Jennings Hill was put to death. Claps of thunder could be heard inside the execution chamber as he uttered his parting remarks: “If you believe abortion is an evil force, you should oppose the force and do what you have to, to stop it.”

Hill’s remorseless soliloquy concluded the life of a man whose extreme anti-abortion leanings were well documented even before he gunned down Dr. John Britton and a companion outside the Ladies Center clinic, in Pensacola, on July 29, 1994. Hill predicted, incorrectly, that violence directed at abortion providers would surge after his death. But his martyrdom in the eyes of supporters reflected the cementing of religious-right extremism and the pro-life movement and underscored the spiritual motivations behind some of the 1990s’ most shocking acts of domestic terrorism. In recent years, while extreme violence has dipped, protests and intimidation of abortion providers have persisted, and legislation has actually made it harder for women to access their services in many states.

In press images taken at demonstrations and attacks since the late 1980s, the intensity of belief underpinning the pro-life crusade is shockingly apparent. These sanctimonious adherents aren’t the cartoonish thugs of today’s alt-right, but their faith is characterized by a similarly misguided devotion to supposedly unshakable tenets. “Pro Life: without compromise, without exception, without apology” was the message printed on one man’s T-shirt at an Operation Rescue pray-in outside an Orlando clinic in 1998. It’s an intractable view of the world, predicated on patriarchal control and a dangerous level of ignorance — a base refusal to consider the variances of other people’s experience. Pictures incorporate many of the signs and symbols to which that conviction is rooted. From crosses to crucifixions, with evangelical fervor and righteous resolve, these zealots are nothing if not aware of the image they project. Belief, however, can never validate violence. Though they are absolute in their moral rightness, their theatrical gestures amount to little more than a reminder of the tenacious danger posed by archaic belief systems and the changeless, uneven slippage of time.

Left: An anti-abortion activist dressed as the grim reaper pickets outside the clinic of Dr. Bruce Lucero in Mobile, Alabama, in 1996. Lucero is suing the protesters and a local priest to keep them away from his clinic. (AP Photo/File) | Right: A man prays for convicted killer Paul Hill as storm clouds hang over the Florida State Prison on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2003. Hill was executed by lethal injection for the 1994 shotgun slayings of abortion Dr. John Britton and his escort James Barrett outside a Pensacola abortion clinic. (AP Photo/Peter Cosgrove)

A Buffalo, N.Y., church service is part of Operation Save America, a series of events organized by Operation Rescue to spread a message denouncing abortion, child pornography and teen sex at clinics, schools and bookstores in the Buffalo area in 1999. (AP Photo/David Duprey)

Police arrest abortion protesters outside a Planned Parenthood Clinic in New York on Friday, Jan. 13, 1989. (AP Photo/Mario Suriani)

Debris flies through the air after a second bomb explodes outside the Atlanta Northside Family Planning Services clinic in Atlanta on Thursday, Jan. 16, 1997. (AP Photo/Alan Mothner)

John C. Salvi III, who is accused of killing two Brookline, Massachusetts, abortion clinic employees in December 1994, gazes upward in Norfolk Superior Court during the jury selection phase of his trial. (AP Photo/POOL, Brian Synder)

Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry kneels in prayer outside the Woman’s Health Care Services abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas, with over 1,000 other protesters in 1991. (AP Photo/Steve Rasmussen)

Operation Rescue demonstrators kneel handcuffed outside barricades in front of Dr. Shalom Press’ clinic as they are arrested by Amherst police and taken onto a waiting school bus on April 22, 1992. (AP Photo/Bill Sikes)

Law enforcement agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms search the ground outside the New Woman All Women Health Care clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, on Thursday, Jan. 29, 1998. A bomb exploded outside the clinic, killing an off-duty Birmingham police officer and a clinic nurse. (AP Photo/Caroline Baird)

Left: Mary Grace Westman and behind her, Dan Swenson, carry crucifixes during an anti-abortion protest outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Good Friday, March 25, 2005. (AP Photo/Janet Hostetter) | Right: Supporters of death row inmate Paul Jennings Hill weep and release balloons at 6 p.m., the scheduled time of execution, outside Florida State Prison on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2003. AP Photo/Scott Audette)

Anti-aborton protesters link arms outside an entrance of the West Loope women’s clinic in Houston, Aug. 17, 1992. Police moved in to restore order, arresting more than three dozen abortion opponents who pushed through a line of abortion rights advocates. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

A family from kneels in prayer in front of an abortion clinic in Orlando, Florida, called the Birth Control Center during a protest by Operation Rescue on Tuesday, June 2, 1998. The family of nine have criss-crossed the country during the past decade to demonstrate with Operation Rescue in front of abortion clinics. (AP Photo/John Amis)

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