When we meet Angel Dillard in the recent documentary “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” she’s a bright, perky mother of two who’s volunteering at the Kansans for Life booth at the state fair.
Nothing like a thug.
But a thug she is, if what the federal government says is true. Dillard is accused of sending a threatening letter in January to a Wichita doctor who plans to start performing abortions in that city where none has been offered openly since the 2009 assassination of George Tiller.
“Thousands of people are already looking into your background,” reads the letter to physician Mila Means. “They will know your habits and routines. They know where you shop, who your friends are, what you drive, where you live.
“You will be checking under your car everyday — because maybe today is the day someone places an explosive under it ”
There’s much more, but you get the flavor of it. What prompted the Justice Department’s interest was that part about the car bomb, coupled with Dillard’s past public statements of support for Tiller’s killer, her pen pal Scott Roeder, and the following “threat of force,” as the U.S attorney’s office calls it in last week’s court filings:
“I urge you to think very carefully about the choices you are making. We will not let this abomination continue without doing everything we can to stop it.”
That’s the life of an abortion provider in America today: The feeling of being targeted, never knowing whether the next Roeder will act out on the right-to-life movement’s heated rhetoric.
For Means, the harassment started as soon as word got out, in December, that she and another doctor were planning to provide abortions in Wichita.
Operation Rescue smeared them as lousy doctors supposedly with shaky financial histories under the heading “Backgrounds suggest new Wichita abortionists would be dangers to the public.”
The other doctor dropped his plans, but Means is pushing ahead. She had a mechanic check her car for booby traps and began staying overnight at different locations.
“Since my intention to perform abortions in Wichita has become publicly known,” she said in a court affidavit, “my home, office and employees have been the subject of anti-abortion protests and I have been the subject of flyers and emails urging those in the anti-abortion community to take action against me.”
Next week, a judge will hear U.S. District Attorney Barry Grissom’s request for an injunction prohibiting Dillard from contact with Means.
“I would love to make a statement,” Dillard said when I reached her Tuesday at her home in Valley Center, Kan. But her attorney advised her to decline to comment.