Pro-Life Supporters of South Dakota Abortion Ban Receive Threats, Vandalism 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 6, 2006
Sioux Falls, SD (LifeNews.com) — High profile supporters of South Dakota’s ban on virtually all abortions, which the state’s governor signed into law today, have been targeted with act of vandalism by abortion advocates angry the state would challenge Roe v. Wade.
Leslee Unruh is the founder and director of the Alpha Center, a Sioux Falls based crisis pregnancy center that helps women in the state’s largest city find abortion alternatives.
Unruh, who also heads a national abstinence group, has been one of the more vocal proponents of the state’s new abortion ban. She’s now the target of pro-abrotion activists.
In an interview with Family News in Focus, Unruh said her house has been plastered with eggs, she’s been mailed coat hangers by those who claim women will die from illegal abortions.
Unruh has had threatening calls in the middle of the night, hate mail and her favorite coffee shop told her to stop coming in because of the problems.
"They said, ‘We have a choice as to who we serve, and we choose not to serve you,’ " she told FNIF. "They were careful to emphasize the word ‘choice.’ "
Unruh’s husband is a doctor and leading pro-life advocate in the state himself.
She told FNIF that he has had the bodies of dead and decomposing animals placed on his chiropractic clinic’s property. The actions have made some of his employees scared to go to work.
Unruh told the Focus on the Family publication she expected pro-abortion activists to be upset by the ban but she never expected to be the victim of threats and retaliation.
"I am sad for all the people that send the hangers and have all this anger because of being connected to the abortion issue in their own lives," she said. "I’m concerned about my whole country now. I thought you were at least free to say what you thought, but they do not want me to speak. Not only do they want to hush unborn children, they don’t want me to talk about it, either."
She told FNIF that what abortion proponents are forgetting is how abortion affects women as well.
"It seems to make them the most angry," she said, "when I talk about post-abortive women."
The pro-life activist is taking things in stride and plans to use the coat hangers to hang up baby clothes in the pregnancy center.
