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Dr. Slepian’s Assassination
Dr. Barnett Slepian was murdered in his home by an anti-abortion militant, James Charles Kopp, on this date in 1998. Slepian, 52, was the primary obstetrics/gynecology doctor at a clinic that served mostly poor women in Buffalo, New York. The clinic had been targeted for protest and harassment by Operation Rescue and other anti-abortion groups, and Slepian had received hundreds of death threats. The father of four sons, he had just returned home with them from a memorial service for his own father at the family’s synagogue when he was shot through his window by a high-powered rifle. He was the fourth doctor and seventh person in the U.S. murdered for providing abortions. Kopp evaded arrest for four years with the help of a network of friends and anti-abortion militants. He is currently serving a sentence of 25 years to life for second-degree murder.
“Please don’t feign surprise, dismay, or certainly not innocence when a more volatile and less-restrained member of the group decides to react to their inflammatory rhetoric by shooting an abortion provider.” —Dr. Barnett Slepian, letter to Buffalo News, 1994
I’m Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents. Before you go, I need to ask something of you.
In recent years, I’ve watched as mainstream Jewish institutions and media have chosen ethnonationalism over liberal democracy and mass slaughter over the pursuit of a just peace. Jewish Currents offers something different. It’s a magazine built on intellectual curiosity and respect for the dignity of all people.
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Lawrence Bush edited Jewish Currents from 2003 until 2018. He is the author of Bessie: A Novel of Love and Revolution and Waiting for God: The Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist, among other books. His new volume of illustrated Torah commentaries, American Torah Toons 2, is scheduled for publication this year.
