Barnett Slepian

Barnett Slepian (October 21, 1946 – October 23, 1998) was an American physician and OB/GYN who was murdered in his home by anti-abortion activist James Charles Kopp.

Dr. Slepian worked at Buffalo GYN Womenservices, Inc. in Buffalo, New York providing abortion for members of the local and surrounding communities. He also ran his own private OB/GYN practice in Amherst, New York. Slepian was sympathetic to the beliefs of those who opposed abortion, saying, "Abortion is undeniably the taking of potential life. It is not pretty. It is not easy. And in a perfect world, it would not be necessary."

On October 23, 1998, Dr. Slepian had returned from synagogue, where he was attending a memorial service for his father, and was preparing soup in his kitchen when Kopp shot him through a window. The bullet shattered his spine and tore his aorta, barely missing his son's head as it exited. He died two hours later. Earlier that afternoon, Slepian's wife Lynne had forwarded a warning of potential attacks on her husband to a local police inspector.

Within days of Dr. Slepian's murder, pro-life groups rallied and staged clinic confrontations in Buffalo and Rochester, New York. While local leaders from both sides of the abortion debate decried these rallies as potential incitements to further violence, more extreme members of the pro-life community, such as Flip Benham of Operation Rescue, labeled calls for nonviolence "pitiful" and suggested that unless abortion was outlawed, "we are in store for more bloodshed in the streets—the likes of which will sicken even the sturdiest among us." In response to the shooting death of abortionist Barnett Slepian, Donald Spitz, founder of Pro-Life Virginia said: "What would I say to the family of Slepian? They live in a $500,000 house that was paid for with blood money - the blood of those babies that Barnett Slepian murdered... He knew what he was doing, he was murdering children."

Following Dr. Slepian's murder, Kopp fled the U.S., but was arrested in France and extradited. He was tried and convicted of second-degree murder in Buffalo, New York and is currently serving a 25 years to life term of imprisonment.

This murder was the climax of a series of five sniper attacks in four years in northern New York and Canada. Dr. Slepian was the fourth doctor and up to that time the seventh person in the USA to be murdered for performing abortions. Following Dr. Slepian's murder, local pro-choice and pro-life activists joined together to deplore the murder.

The Ani DiFranco song Hello Birmingham, from her 1999 album To The Teeth, was written as a response to the Slepian murder.