Ch. 'Justifiable Homicide'

Summary

American Shrapnel — Chapter: "Justifiable Homicide"

Podcast by Alabama Media Group | Hosts: John Archibald & Becca Andrews | Release Date: August 20, 2025

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Episode Overview

This chapter of American Shrapnel delves deep into the 1998 bombing of the New Woman All Women abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, committed by Eric Robert Rudolph. The story intertwines personal recollections from survivors and clinic workers with a broader exploration of the rise in anti-abortion extremism across America from the 1970s through the 1990s. The hosts, John Archibald and Becca Andrews, investigate not just the traumatic events themselves, but the political, religious, and social factors—and the misogyny and racial animus—that created a climate ready to explode. The episode further discusses the ongoing repercussions of this violence, the controversial role of groups like the Army of God, and the chilling echoes these events have in contemporary America.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Scene in Birmingham (01:05–04:19)

• Diane Derzis' Immediate Reaction: Diane, the clinic owner, recounts the chaotic, guilt-ridden, and surreal aftermath as she rushed to Birmingham following the bombing.

  • Quote: "The sirens you hear are coming for us. They've blown up the clinic." — Diane Derzis (01:07)
  • Expresses profound guilt for not being present, believing her activism made her a target (02:38).

• Initial Suspicions and Shocking Realization: Diane assumed a longtime protester was responsible, revealing the persistent, menacing environment surrounding clinics in the South (04:19).

  • Quote: "I immediately assumed it was a local, someone that I had known for a long time." — Diane Derzis (04:45)

2. History and Climate of Anti-Abortion Violence (05:07–11:50)

• Birmingham’s Unique Role: Reporter Greg Garrison outlines the city’s history as one of the few Southern cities with abortion access pre-Roe v. Wade, fueling anti-abortion backlash.

  • Quote: “Birmingham was one of the few places in the south where you could go and get a legal abortion.” — Greg Garrison (06:53)

• Escalation of Protests and Operation Rescue: Rise of tactics like blockading clinics, spearheaded by Randall Terry and copied nationwide.

  • Quote: “They felt like they were rescuing the fetus if they were able to deter a patient from entering the clinic just by putting their body in front of it.” — Greg Garrison (08:15)
  • Legal system overwhelmed, but penalties minimal, allowing repeated harassment (10:00–10:35).

3. The Radicalization of Eric Rudolph (11:18–12:15)

• Rudolph described as isolated from the established anti-abortion movement, but his motives rooted in misogyny, racism, and resentment.
  • Quote: “He resented the women's movement and hated to salute female officers... He only wanted to take orders from men.” — John Archibald (11:50)
  • Notably, his opposition to abortion was coded in white supremacy: “...the majority of abortions...were performed on white women...I don't think he cared if a black woman went into an abortion clinic.” — Deborah Rudolph (12:15)

4. Violence and Its Toll on Clinics and Workers (12:49–21:13)

• Longstanding Threats Escalating to Murder: The killing of Dr. David Gunn, the first documented anti-abortion-related doctor murder (13:16).

  • Quote: “I still remember seeing his glasses laying in the dirt with blood on the lenses." — Diane Derzis (14:18)

• Congressional Response—The FACE Act: Providing federal penalties for violence and obstruction, but intensifying the resolve of hardcore activists.

  • Quote: “If abortion is murder, act like it.” — Operation Rescue slogan (16:10)

• Effects on Care Access and Staff: Persistent fear led to clinic closures and severe staff shortages; personal targeting escalated (20:13–22:14).

5. The Army of God & the Justification of Violence (16:29–34:41)

• Influence of Paul Hill & the Army of God:

  • Quote from Rudolph's manifesto: "Hill seemed like a perfect anomaly, a genuine American hero in an age of cowardice…" (17:00)

• The Army of God is described more as a decentralized "brand" and philosophy for violent extremism than a structured group (30:20–31:06).

  • Quote: “The people who identified as Army of God could commit violent acts and no one else…would be held accountable for it.” — Prof. Carol Mason (30:20)
  • The Army of God's manual provided both moral justification and technical instruction for violent acts (33:36).

• Merchandise and Martyrdom: Selling "Run Rudolph, Run" memorabilia and featuring Rudolph's writings, romanticizing violence (32:15–32:29).

6. The Human Cost—First-Person Accounts (23:35–29:17, 35:28–37:19)

• Emily Lyons' Ordeal: Severely injured nurse, describes fragmented memories of the bombing and grueling recovery.

  • Quote: “Four weeks later, I remember getting out of the burn unit and going to a private room...My youngest one cried. She couldn't stay in the room with me.” — Emily Lyons (23:52)
  • Received both touching support and vicious hate mail: “You should have been killed like Sandy.” — Emily Lyons (25:33)

• Physical and Emotional Scars: Emily continues to live with shrapnel in her body but refuses to be cowed.

  • Quote: “With so much metal in my legs, I have a very strong magnet...You can feel it most of the time.” — Emily Lyons (35:33)
  • “You took enough from me that day. I’m not going to let it control the rest of my life.” — Emily Lyons (36:31)

• Diane Derzis’ Resilience and Reflection: Despite the danger, Diane is unwavering in her purpose.

  • Quote: “I really do believe…that’s what I was put here to do. You know, I’m nasty...but I can’t stop.” — Diane Derzis (36:51)

7. Ongoing Threats and Modern Parallels (34:13–35:28)

• The episode draws a chilling line from 90s violence to modern-day political shifts, referencing recent attacks and governmental rollbacks on protections (President Trump’s pardons and DOJ orders against FACE Act prosecutions) (34:13).

  • Quote: “The violence hasn't stopped.” — John Archibald (34:41)

• Justifiable Homicide: Discussion on the rhetorical shift by extremists—using terms like "justifiable homicide" instead of "murder"—and the lasting power of these ideologies (35:11).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “When you looked at where those threads went, they were designed to kill women sitting in that waiting room.” — Diane Derzis, recalling the shrapnel pathways after the bombing (26:37)
• “He saved a lot of lives that day, because he did.” — Diane Derzis, on security guard Sandy Sanderson, who died in the attack (27:26)
• “The last word, retribution, was heavily underlined.” — John Archibald, quoting Eric Rudolph’s chilling Army of God letter (29:28)
• “There are some good people with the movement. … She was truly what love and Christianity was supposed to be about. But, no, it's not generally like that.” — Diane Derzis, on unlikely friendships across the protest line (23:00)
• “It's scary stuff, especially since one of the first things Donald Trump did in his second term was send a message to anti abortion activists.” — Becca Andrews (34:13)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Diane Derzis’ first reaction to the bombing: 01:05–03:42
• History of Birmingham’s abortion clinics & anti-abortion protests: 06:40–10:00
• The rise of Operation Rescue & escalation of tactics: 08:15–10:35
• Eric Rudolph's personal motivations and misogyny/racism: 11:50–12:35
• The FACE Act and its impacts: 14:48–16:00
• Rudolph and the Army of God; justification for lethal force: 16:29–17:32, 30:20–34:13
• Emily Lyons' account of the bombing and aftermath: 23:35–25:33, 35:28–36:31
• Modern attacks and rollback of abortion protections: 34:13–34:41

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Conclusion & Tone

The episode blends investigative journalism with deeply personal testimony, painting a harrowing, unflinching portrait of the lethal intersection between extremism, misogyny, and America's ongoing abortion debate. The tone is direct, empathetic to survivors and workers, and sharply critical of the political structures that have enabled and perpetuated violence.

Both Diane Derzis and Emily Lyons, scarred but unbroken, provide the episode’s moral center—testaments to endurance in the face of terror, and a warning that the rage fueling this violence has not abated. The show closes, unresolved and urgent, with a promise to continue tracking the hunt for Rudolph and the shadow he—and those like him—still cast on America.

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For more in-depth exploration, listen to the next episode of American Shrapnel.

Transcript

[John Archibald]

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[Becca Andrews]

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[Mary Harris]

It can be easy to get discouraged.

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Frustrated, but you can't afford not to pay attention. You need trustworthy independent journalism to cut through the noise and hold power to account. I'm Mary Harris, host of What Next from Slate.com we are a daily news podcast with a kind of transparent, smart.

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[Becca Andrews]

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[Diane Derzis]

Another abortion clinic, this one in Birmingham, Alabama. I got a phone call from the director and she said, the sirens you hear are coming for us. They've blown up the clinic. So I was screaming at my husband, you know, turn on the tv. And I guess we had CNN on and they had, I guess there was smoke and there were cop cars everywhere and it was, you know, everybody was just talking and it was absolutely surreal. No one knew anything yet. So I got a plane out of Charlottesville, Virginia to fly in to Birmingham within an hour and waiting to catch a plane into Birmingham. It was on the news. Bombed, Security guard killed. Nurse in surgery. Could feel the tears just leaking, you know, it was like, oh my God. And the guilt I felt for not being there, for putting others at risk.

[Becca Andrews]

That's Diane Derzis. She owned the New Woman All Women clinic in Birmingham the day the bomb went off is still very clear for her. And the guilt is clear too. Those feelings of loss and responsibility and helplessness.

[Diane Derzis]

I always had known that this would happen. And that was the guilt, that it wasn't me, it was somebody else, it should have been me because I was the big mouth, always out there, always keeping it in the forefront. You know, I think that was something that's another thing that, that you always think, maybe if I'd had cameras, maybe if I, maybe if I hadn't talked all the time, maybe if I hadn't done every press thing that, you know, and at the same time all those things are going through your head, you know that this is why you do those things. Because this anger and this lava that's in these people will emerge at some point.

[John Archibald]

It was a short flight, and a few friends waited for Diane at the gate, which was something you could do in 1998. She rushed past the press, something she rarely did. She drove with her friends to what was left of the clinic.

[Diane Derzis]

Couldn't get closer than maybe three blocks. The command center was there. And it was surreal. I mean, even now thinking about it, it was just. I think I went down to the hospital next to check on Emily, and she was still in surgery. She'd been in surgery a long time. The administrator was no longer answering her telephone. So there was no one. There was, you know, there was just no one there. The police had it under guard.

[John Archibald]

So much was coming at her. One employee dead and another hanging to life. Guilt questions from the cops and the feds and a history of threats and violence at her clinics and others. She turned to the big question, who did it? She thought immediately of local protesters. Diane was sure one of the people who had devoted their lives to protesting hers must have finally gone too far.

[Diane Derzis]

You know, they had picketed us, they had gone to doctors homes, they'd sent things in the mail. You know, we were going to die. We should die for killing babies. So I immediately assumed it was a local, someone that I had known for a long time.

[John Archibald]

This is American Shrapnel. It's more than a story of Eric Robert Rudolph. It's a tale of how anti abortion violence simmered until it blew up. I'm John Archibald.

[Becca Andrews]

And I'm Becca Andrews. This is a story about misogyny and the women who stood in its way. Women like Derzis and nurse Emily Lyons.

[John Archibald]

Emily Lyons knew her job came with risk, though she didn't realize at first how much risk that was. Then one day, an unexpected package showed up at the clinic.

[Emily Lyons]

Naive me took the package from the mailman and I was like, what is this? The administrator looked at it and it had stamps all over it. Brown paper, written address and stamps, regular stamps, not go to the post office and mail it kind of stuff. And so went upstairs and told the doctor about. He says, get out of the building, call the bomb squad. It's just a box. Well, when they got there, when the bomb squad got there, the guy goes, okay, who got the box? Did you shake the box? Yes, I shook the the box. So the little robot guy went in and the package was candy, but it had the little plastic fetuses stuck into each piece of candy.

[John Archibald]

Protests had been going on in Birmingham for years. The City had been one of the only places where women could get legal abortions in the south before Roe v. Wade. Here's Greg Garrison, a reporter for the Birmingham News.

[Greg Garrison]

It's important to remember that history that UAB had this program allowing abortions for pregnant teens especially, and they used the definition of health of the woman very broadly. And so they were able to make abortions that they deemed necessary available from like 1971 to 1973 before Roe versus Wade. So Birmingham was one of the few places in the south where you could go and get a legal abortion. After Roe vs. Wade, the clinics began popping up and proliferating and having successful business to the point that by 1988, you had Summit Medical center located near UAB. You had the Birmingham Women's Medical clinic. You had Planned Parenthood of Alabama.

[John Archibald]

Birmingham Women's Medical clinic would become new all women clinic. When Diane took it over, we were.

[Becca Andrews]

Focusing on Birmingham because it was a hotbed and for obvious reasons, but this was going on at clinics across the country. The anti abortion movement had been growing since the mid-70s. Some organizations began to use tactics of war to oppose what they considered violence against the unborn. Garrison covered the protests as they grew.

[Greg Garrison]

Randall Terry, who founded Operation Rescue in the summer of 1988, he kind of came up with this protest technique of blockading clinic entrances. And they called it Operation Rescue because they felt like they were rescuing the fetus if they were able to deter a patient from entering the clinic just by putting their body in front of it.

[Becca Andrews]

Here is Mary Ziegler, a historian and law professor who has written seven books on abortion legal history.

[Mary Harris]

So Randall Terry, who's the head of Operation Rescue, had a theory that if anti abortion protesters broke enough laws, they would sort of force the courts to reconsider Roe v. Wade because the justice system would be so clogged with protesters.

[John Archibald]

Scott Morrow, a former cop who was head of security at New Woman all women at the time of the bombing, remembers those protests and the personalities behind them.

[Becca Andrews]

Death and destruction. They killed innocent babies to make their living.

[John Archibald]

I was really dealing because they were yelling at him all the time, please don't kill your baby. Please don't kill your baby. Or even worse things.

[Diane Derzis]

They had a protest where they would.

[John Archibald]

Crawl and they would, if you touched them, they would stop. And so we had tack out there with the buses and there was no problems, no violence, peaceful. But that was their tactic then, is to just blockade. Local anti abortion activist Jim Pinto, then an Episcopal priest in Birmingham, went to train with Terry In August of 1988, he came back and trained others and by the end of the year, protests were in full force.

[Greg Garrison]

And it was just an indescribable scene of hundreds of people. And I'm talking about grandmothers, women with their kids. People would come and take part in these protests. Some would hold signs and pick it, others would take part in the blockades. So you had the scene of ministers and priests and little old ladies being arrested as they put their bodies down in front of these abortion clinic doors. And the police were overwhelmed. They were putting people in paddy wagons. Hundreds of people were arrested.

[John Archibald]

That scheme of clogging the justice system really didn't work so well. Minor law breaking results in minor penalties. So generally the protesters would be carted off to jail, somebody would pay a fine and they get right back to it. Jim Pinto, for instance, was arrested 10 times between 1989 and 1995 on 14 charges in including criminal trespass, crossing police lines and resisting arrest. There were few real consequences for harassing people entering the clinics.

[Becca Andrews]

Diane mentally scrolled through the faces of protesters as she flew to Birmingham. It was not a short list, but she knew them and they knew her. In the end, authorities told Diane, it wasn't any of the people she had suspected. Rather, the man who'd blown up her clinic, killed one colleague and severely injured another was a total stranger. Eric Rudolph wasn't well known in the abortion world, but his feelings about women were clear to those who knew him.

[John Archibald]

When the feds interviewed Eric Rudolph's friends and family after he was identified as a suspect, people told them he resented the women's movement and hated to salute female officers in the army. He only wanted to take orders from.

[Becca Andrews]

Men, white men really. Not that he liked taking orders at all. His views on abortion may have been driven by race too. This is Deborah Rudolph, his former sister in law.

[Mary Harris]

One of the really big things I remember Eric stating was that the majority of abortions performed in America today or at that time, were performed on white women. I don't think he cared if a black woman went into an abortion clinic. I don't think he cared.

[Becca Andrews]

People have a lot of different reasons for opposing abortion. Not all of them are about life. For a lot of folks, it's about control.

[John Archibald]

Rudolph's bomb wasn't Diane's first experience with loss at the hands of a violent anti abortion fanatic. In 1993, David Gunn, who had worked as a physician at the Birmingham clinic, was shot and killed in Florida outside Pensacola Women's Medical Services. His death was America's first documented murder of a doctor where the killer was motivated by anti abortion belief. Diane was heartbroken.

[Diane Derzis]

Dr. Gunn was from Alabama. He was. He began doing abortions in surrounding states because it was hard to find local physicians. Absolutely wouldn't because of the terrorists that lived in their midst. He worked for our clinic in Columbus and he worked in Montgomery. And the anniversary of Roe v. Wade had just happened. And he, David, became politicized as these anti started following him and started provoking him. But he was in Montgomery and the administrator called me and she said he is dancing. He got out of the car and he put a boombox on top of it car and he hit the button and I walked back down, started playing and he began doing a jig around the parking lot with them and singing. And they killed him two months later. I still remember seeing his glasses laying in the dirt with blood on the lenses.

[John Archibald]

The violence really surged about the time Dr. Gunn was killed. Death threats became more common and arson and vandalism and bombings and murder. Congress stepped in to try to protect the clinics.

[Becca Andrews]

Here's Mary Ziegler again explaining the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances act, aka the FACE act, which became federal law in 1994.

[Mary Harris]

So the premise of the FACE act was to create actual penalties for people who blocked access to clinics, particularly when they did so by either threatening violence or using force. It was pretty transformative in the sense that again, before this, there was a sense that even though the crimes committed as part of blockading were illegal, they were so barely treated as illegal that no one who wanted to blockade really ultimately worried about it.

[Becca Andrews]

The FACE act scared off some of the less committed protesters, but the real devotees upped their game. President Bill Clinton signed the act into law a year after Gun's death.

[John Archibald]

Let us take the opportunity in signing this not only to speak out against the extremism and the vigilante conduct which gave right to this law, but to ask the American people once again to reach across these awful barriers and start listening to each other again and talking with each other again and trying to honestly deal with these problems again.

[Becca Andrews]

For some protesters, it began to feel like if simply blocking the clinic entrance was illegal, then why not take other illegal action? Why stop at the threshold?

[Mary Harris]

The catchphrase of Operation Rescue is if abortion is murder, act like it. And so there were always the hardest core members of the blockade movement who would say, well, I mean, if abortion is murder, acting like it would mean potentially using lethal force against people who are taking the lives of those persons.

[John Archibald]

If that was Rudolph's justification. He certainly had role models. In the summer of 1994, a defrocked Presbyterian minister named Paul Hill shot and killed Dr. John Britton, who performed abortions in Florida. He also killed his unarmed security guy, a retired Air Force colonel named James H. Barrett.

[Becca Andrews]

Hill had ties to the army of God, that amorphous organization that Rudolph claimed allegiance to in his letters after his bombings. More on that later.

[John Archibald]

Yeah, Rudolph cites Hill in his manifesto not just as a role model, but a religious figure, a martyr, some kind of John of Arc, he writes, and this is a quote, Hill seemed like a perfect anomaly, a genuine American hero in an age of cowardice. I'd read about such people in history books, but I didn't think they existed anymore. I knew then that the era of hot air was over. People were finally bridging the gap between their rhetoric and their actions. I knew then it was time for me to act as well.

[Becca Andrews]

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[Emily Lyons]

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[Diane Derzis]

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[Emily Lyons]

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[Mary Harris]

Paul Hill was sort of unusual because Paul Hill was almost like a theorist, you know, like he actually like. I mean, I don't mean to say nobody else thought about this stuff, but Paul Hill was sort of in this wing of people using violence. Michael Bray the clinic bomber was also in this category. People who were, you know, publishing books and statements, you know, talking about lethal force.

[John Archibald]

This is Hill from his jail cell. Murder is unjust killing, whereas killing a murderer under many circumstances is justified.

[Becca Andrews]

Anti abortion extremists like to call the killing of doctors justifiable homicide. Hill also argued that using force would give the pro life movement credibility and direction and was necessary to defend the unborn.

[John Archibald]

It's important to remember that a lot of people who were deeply opposed to abortion antis, as Derzis calls them, are also unforgiving about clinic violence. But the violence and the threat of it really shook up doctors in clinics. In the years leading up to the Face act, the number of hospitals providing abortion care fell by almost a fifth, and only 6% of counties in America had access. Doctors were afraid.

[Diane Derzis]

I had a local doctor and they got into his garage and left a note on his car window that said, you have a wife and two children to lose. He came to my office the next day and he was crying and he said, I hate myself. He said, I hate who I am, that I have to stop. But he said, I mean, you know, it's still. That gives me cold chills. But to see. He said, this has to be done. People have to do that. And I'm so sorry.

[Becca Andrews]

Other clinic workers got vitriol too, and worse. There's this one story she told us that I can't get out of my head. A clinic worker called Diane hysterical that someone had killed her cat.

[Diane Derzis]

And it was sobbed. It cut its head off. And when they marched that year, they had a sign that said, where's the cat?

[Becca Andrews]

Another time, a counselor at the clinic got pregnant and her baby died during delivery.

[Diane Derzis]

And they. The antis was awful. You know, this is what you get for killing babies. And God took your baby for killing babies.

[John Archibald]

Diane bought a $7,000 security system, twice that in today's money. She wanted to protect herself and a doctor who regularly stayed in her house when he was in Birmingham. One day she noticed that a huge yucca plant in her yard was simply missing.

[Diane Derzis]

They'd been to my house, they'd cut the yuccas down in my yard. And when I called the FBI, I felt like I was crazy.

[Becca Andrews]

There wasn't a trace of it. It was eerie. But a neighbor told her they had seen somebody in the yard. By cutting down the yucca, they left a clear shot through the window of her house.

[Diane Derzis]

And I mean, it was a straight shot. You could have done a straight shot. When he went to that door, because, you know, he had his own bedroom, and that's where he'd stayed during the. When he came down.

[Becca Andrews]

Then she went to the gun range.

[John Archibald]

So you filmed yourselves shooting?

[Diane Derzis]

Mm. Yep. And I'm tell you something, I would blow their ass away.

[Becca Andrews]

Diane had to look her threats right in the eyes just about every day. She got to know the folks who paced outside of her clinic, hollering and carrying on. She counted at least one of them as a friend.

[Diane Derzis]

There's just. There are some good people with the movement. There are some good people with the movement. There was a woman. Natalie was one of the Catholics, and she and I became fast friends. So I'd kill babies in the morning, and she would be outside singing, and then we would go shopping that afternoon or go have lunch. And we did that for years. She was the most. She was truly what love and Christianity was supposed to be about. But, no, it's not generally like that.

[John Archibald]

Then came the bomb that killed Sandy Sanderson and changed Emily's life forever.

[Becca Andrews]

On a chilly January morning, Emily stood in the door of the clinic. When Eric Rudolph triggered his bomb, she remembers little of it. Perhaps it's a blessing that the last thing she recalls is dancing.

[Emily Lyons]

The night before, I remember I went out with a friend to what used to be jitterbugs, and Jeffrey was out of town. Four weeks later, I remember getting out of the burn unit and going to a private room. I had a sitter around the clock for security. Didn't really know what had happened. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't see the news. Of course, they didn't have news in the burn unit that I know of. Jeffrey came to see me a lot. My children saw me. My youngest one cried. She couldn't stay in the room with me.

[John Archibald]

Conflicting messages and visits came flooding to Emily Lyons as she lay in the hospital after the bombing, clinging to life.

[Emily Lyons]

There were a lot of people who sent messages and things in support saying, yeah, it's a bad thing that happened, but we're here. And some of those people really surprised me because I had heard of them. But when Gloria Steinem comes to see you in the hospital, it was kind of like, oh, my God. Do you know who that is? My parents did. They went out in the hall and stood, and when she left, they go, who was that? And I said, you, Steinem. You know, it was right over their heads.

[Becca Andrews]

But there were other messages. Her husband read them because she was in no shape to do it.

[Emily Lyons]

We got the nasty emails. We had a separate category for Those you're going to burn in a lake of fire. Do they not know what happened? I got burned. It's been hell. I'm not doing that again. You deserve what you got. You should have been killed like Sandy. You know, there's very few people I can think of that I want to have out of my life. But to just tell a random stranger, you should have died just like Sandy did. How do you feel about that?

[John Archibald]

Diane went back to the site the day after the bombing. Hot pink threads radiated from the front walkway of the clinic to trace the path of the shrapnel. Like giant string sculpture.

[Diane Derzis]

When you looked at where those threads went, they were designed to kill women sitting in that waiting room. They were into the chairs and they were right there where people checked in and where the staff would have been. And upstairs they were where the recovery room was, where people would have been sitting. It actually made it real that you could see those fragments of nails and whatever other horrid things he'd put in there that were meant to enter someone's body and do as much damage as it could. I think I've still got pictures of that because it's just so profound.

[Becca Andrews]

Diane believes Sandy Sanderson should be remembered as a hero and a good guy.

[Diane Derzis]

Every time he just wanted to talk about his wife and his child, you know, he. He liked being a policeman and he would have liked that. He saved a lot of lives that day, because he did.

[John Archibald]

Diane also believes this attack was carefully planned, that Rudolph must have had help, maybe from a local. At minimum, he'd done recon in Birmingham.

[Diane Derzis]

Wasn't something someone just decided to do. And let's just pick this clinic. You know, this was well thought out. And he'd been to Birmingham. He or someone had been in that clinic. For him to have been that specific with where they went.

[Becca Andrews]

Cops aren't sure whether he had been in Birmingham before, but Emily Lyon sure thinks he had help in the city.

[Emily Lyons]

He may be the only one here in town that day that did it, but he had people before then.

[John Archibald]

Hubie Dodd, one of Rudolph's lawyers, believes the target may have been chosen by someone else. There were local anti abortion activists and or extremists here who had connections in the eastern Tennessee region and in western North Carolina region, but the eastern Tennessee region. There were certainly lines that could be drawn from Birmingham to that area and then over to where Eric was. And Eric certainly had contacts with those folks in East Tennessee. I mean, if you're asking me purely for my belief. And again, it's my belief only. I believe that the target was chosen by a person or persons in East Tennessee who had contacts with folks in Birmingham.

[Becca Andrews]

This may all seem a little convenient, a defense attorney's story to defend his client. But as we've said, Rudolph did publicly claim allegiance to one known group.

[John Archibald]

On February 24, 1997, more than a month after Eric Rudolph bombed the Sandy Springs abortion clinic and days after he bombed the other side, lounge letters arrived at a handful of media outlets. They were written in black felt pen and they all said the same thing, that the bombings had been carried out by units of the army of God. In block letters, Rudolph wrote, the attack therefore serves as a warning. Anyone in or around facilities that murder children may become victims of retribution. The last word, retribution, was heavily underlined.

[Becca Andrews]

Another letter assigned army of God, claimed responsibility for the Birmingham bombing. We asked a lot of people just who exactly is the army of God? Here's Professor Carol Mason, author of Killing for Life.

[Mary Harris]

It's not a member organization. It is more a mindset of militant anti abortionists. And there was no centralized leadership to these folks. And this decentralization was a strategy, wasn't a lack of organizational skills. This is what they wanted, was not a hierarchical structure. The people who identified as army of God could commit violent acts and no one else but those individuals personally would be held accountable for it. So it was a kind of legal strategy to fend off any culpability, but it was also a way to sort of grant permission to anyone who wanted to copycat the violence that had come before.

[John Archibald]

Here's Professor Ziegler again.

[Mary Harris]

The army of God, you know, had started in the 80s and defined itself as, you know, more or less a Christian terrorist organization. They came into, I guess into the public eye in 1982 when they kidnapped a doctor named Hector Bios who was an abortion provider. And they, they were connected to Michael Bray who bombed clinics basically in the D.C. metro. Shelly Shannon, who was a member of army of God, was the one who tried to kill George Tiller.

[John Archibald]

Bray was a bit different from Rudolph. Guess you would call him a thought leader in the extremist wing of the anti abortion movement. He wrote about why it was okay to murder doctors that we can't be sure Rudolph read them.

[Becca Andrews]

It seems likely though, since Rudolph was familiar with the army of God. That site published Bray's rhetoric and a lot of people think he was the author of the army of God manual.

[John Archibald]

Bray was also a vocal supporter of Rudolph. At a banquet for so called pro lifers, he told reporters that he approved of Rudolph's tactics.

[Becca Andrews]

The army of God also auctioned off merch at the banquet, two bumper stickers that said run Rudolph, Run. A T shirt supporting Rudolph, and a sweatshirt that the auctioneer suggested might have been worn by the terrorist himself.

[John Archibald]

Proceeds were supposedly distributed among families who had a loved one in prison for anti abortion violence.

[Becca Andrews]

The army of God did not officially meet. Often they're helmed by Donald Spitz, who is Paul Hill's friend and spiritual advisor. In the week before he was executed, when we reached out to Mr. Spitz, he responded by saying, I don't believe I'm interested. I really do not support murdering little helpless little babies in their mother's womb.

[John Archibald]

The army of God website has been under construction since early 2025, but you can still find Rudolph's writings archived there. And it would be naive to dismiss the group as somehow no longer dangerous. Tonight, from our ABC 7 Eye team, a Chicago area man who federal investigators say pledged allegiance to the domestic terror group army of God, now facing charges connected with a threat to burn down a local abortion clinic.

[Becca Andrews]

The army of God's publication of Rudolph's letters and writings traces back to a time before social media made it easier for extremists to find each other online and to make people like Rudolph into martyrs.

[Mary Harris]

The army of God is a text. It's a manual. Right? It's a book. And the army of God manual went through three editions, I think, before it was discovered by officials, I think, in 1991. But the army of God claims that one of these books was published or created as early as the late 80s. And so the manual has some inspirational writings that encourage people to use violent means to shut down abortion clinics. But the bulk of the manual is a how to. It's a recipe book. It's how to make incendiary devices.

[Becca Andrews]

It's scary stuff, especially since one of the first things Donald Trump did in his second term was send a message to anti abortion activists.

[John Archibald]

On Thursday night, President Trump announced he would pardon 23 anti abortion extremists who had been convicted for violating the FACE Act. And on Friday, Trump's Justice Department issued an order curtailing all prosecutions under the FACE act, save for extraordinary circumstances. And the violence hasn't stopped.

[Diane Derzis]

We continue our live coverage of the.

[Emily Lyons]

Shootings and killing of Representative Melissa Hortman.

[Diane Derzis]

Her husband, and then the shootings of.

[Becca Andrews]

Senator John Hoffman and his wife.

[Diane Derzis]

The Hoffman surviving their injuries but shot multiple times.

[John Archibald]

The man who shot two Minnesota representatives and their spouses in June had a list of Potential targets that included abortion advocates and health care providers. This goes back through the 90s. He was. You really hated abortion.

[Becca Andrews]

Some anti abortion folks like Spitz will not use the term murder to describe the killing of anyone enabling abortion. They prefer terms like justifiable homicide or direct action. Those terms are also used by Rudolph and Hill.

[John Archibald]

Emily Lyon still bears the scars of that direct action.

[Emily Lyons]

With so much metal in my legs, I have a very strong magnet that attaches to that metal and I can make the skin pull up with it. So you know where it is, you can feel it most of the time. I've got some things in my legs now that I can feel the top of the nail. You put it on there, you find it, you know where it is, take it out. Some of it will just have to work its way to the out point. I know where those spots are. I know eventually they'll have to come out. But my right knee, one of the nails punctured that capsule in my knee and that was ah, that was painful.

[John Archibald]

But Emily's not backing down.

[Emily Lyons]

You took enough from me that day. I'm not going to let it control the rest of my life.

[John Archibald]

Neither is Diane. They still aren't afraid.

[Becca Andrews]

She told us that ever since she had an abortion in 1975, she's been certain that this is her purpose. And all these years later, that certainty hasn't faded.

[Diane Derzis]

I really do believe that, that that's what I was put here to do. You know, I'm nasty and you know, because I was, I was thinking the other day, I'm so tired, but I can't stop. I'm going to open as many clinics as I can. It's just I think you have to have.

[John Archibald]

Join us next time on American Shrapnel where a rookie cop gives us a big break in the Eric Rudolph case.

[Becca Andrews]

American Shrapnel is a production of Alabama Media Group. It was written and hosted by me.

[John Archibald]

Becca Andrews and me, John Archibald. Our co creator and executive producer is John Hammondree.

[Becca Andrews]

This episode was engineered by Daniel Potter. Our field producer is Sarah Weitz Kodachek and our social media producers are Caroline Vincent and Mila Oliveira. Our logo and cover art were designed by Jack Browning.

[John Archibald]

Challenge Stevens is our editor in chief. Consulting producers Dan Carter and Ashley Remkes provided valuable feedback. The song you're hearing right now is Birmingham by Beth Thornley and Rob Cairns.

[Becca Andrews]

Special thanks to Diane Derzis, Emily Lyons, Greg Garrison, Mary Ziegler, Scott Morrow, Deborah Rudolph, Carol Mason, Hubie Dodd, Regina Mahone and Renee Bracey. Sherman. Thanks also to Katherine Osayas Champion and Birmingham Public Library.

[John Archibald]

If you like our show, please leave us a rating and a review and follow us on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

[Becca Andrews]

Thanks for listening. You say you'll never join the Navy, that living on a submarine would be too hard. You'd never power a whole ship with nuclear energy, never bring a patient back to life or play the national anthem for a sold out crowd. Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Start your [e-mail] America's Navy forged by the sea.