‘Soldiers’ Follows Violent Opponents of Abortion

New York-based journalist and playwright Daniel Voll first found himself curious about the violent wing of the antiabortion movement in October 1998 because of an accused sniper named James Kopp. That fall Kopp allegedly shot a doctor named Barnett Slepian in the kitchen of the doctor’s home in upstate New York, in front of his children. Kopp then eluded police and disappeared, only to be captured in France earlier this week.

In the intervening years, Voll went in search of antiabortionists like Kopp to discover why they kill. His reporting resulted first in an article for Esquire and, now, in an HBO documentary titled “Soldiers in the Army of God,” which can be seen Sunday night.

Voll co-produced the film with Daphne Pinkerson. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Marc Levin (who also made “Slam”) directed.

HBO could not have timed its release more fortuitously. Beyond Kopp’s capture, in a separate development on Wednesday in San Francisco, a state appeals court threw out a jury verdict that had found an inflammatory antiabortion Web site posed a real threat to doctors and the clinics where they work. Doctors and abortion-rights advocacy groups predict the verdict will lead to a surge of new violence against them.

At a time when both sides of the abortion debate are both celebrating and mourning, Voll’s film provides timely insight. It takes a deep and unsparing look at the men who have appointed themselves to stop those they refer to as the “baby butchers.”

The documentary can be seen right after “The Sopranos” at 10 p.m. If the gangster drama can sometimes curdle a viewer’s blood, the nonfiction “Soldiers” threatens to stop its flow altogether. As is often the case with HBO documentaries, there is no narration, no comforting voice of authority to pass judgment on the hair-raising twists of logic laid out by the film’s real-life protagonists.

There is Paul Hill, who gunned down an abortion doctor named John Bayard Britton in front of an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Fla., in 1993. From death row in a Florida state prison, Hill speaks with the beatific air of one assured of his sainthood. For the cameras, he describes what he was thinking on the day he decided to kill, as he walked on the beach with his three children. “It occurred to me that I was making a sacrifice,” Hill says, his face aglow. “I was thinking about the promise made to Abraham--if he was willing to sacrifice his son. I just laid hold of that promise.”

Then there is the energetic and well-shod Neal Horsley, who runs a Web site that is a virtual scoreboard of marked men: doctors who perform abortions. Horsley draws black lines through the names of those who, like Britton, have been murdered. In press accounts this week, Horsley exulted at the news that he could continue to run his Web site unhampered. Jonathan O’Toole, a 19-year-old looking for direction in life, stumbled onto Horsley and others like him on the Web. The film captures Horsley and an ex-convict named Robert Lokey as they undertake to educate him in the ways of violence against abortion-rights groups.

It is disturbing to listen to these men explain, unchallenged, the rationale behind their beliefs, their fears, their plans for self-defense, revenge or warfare. That is exactly what Voll intends: to deepen the mystery of these characters while not reducing them to comfortable formulas.

“They are all answering some psycho-pathological-spiritual-political call,” Voll says of all the extremists he has come to know. “That’s what makes them so dangerous. Their logic says, ‘I’ve been chosen by God’s special grace.’ If you see it that way, that it’s God’s love, it’s unstoppable. Then you’re in the land of Abraham and Isaac.”

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Voll knows something about that terrain from his parents, who are police chaplains in Minneapolis. When Voll was younger, police paged his parents at all hours to go and comfort murderers and crime victims alike.

His work on the antiabortion story began in 1998, a few months before his son was born to his partner, filmmaker Cecilia Peck (daughter of actor Gregory Peck). That was a short while after his return from a harrowing trip to Bosnia, one that put him face-to-face with Serb warlords, men he regards as living “monsters.”

Back in the United States after that trip, Voll learned that a man named Kopp was suspected of killing a doctor. “What’s the difference between killing a doctor in his home and a Serb warlord killing a Muslim teenager,” Voll wondered. “My first thought was, ‘I want to understand what happened here.’ ”

Voll spoke with Esquire editor Mark Warren who also wondered what prompts that kind of violence.

Horsley lived in Carrollton, Ga. “I said, ‘Go Daniel, go sleep on this guy’s couch and watch him brush his teeth,’ ” Warren recalled. Voll talked his way into his house and did indeed spend the night.

“I wouldn’t be able to do what Daniel does,” Warren said. “He makes himself literally vulnerable to his subjects.” Voll eventually discovered that Horsley worked as a computer consultant with potential access to sensitive medical data at the Centers for Disease Control. The CDC moved Horsley to a remote location after the article appeared. (Horsley has since left the CDC). What amazed Voll was that Horsley, Lokey and O’Toole allowed Voll’s collaborators to return with cameras and capture them on film.

“The degree of vanity that’s there in every sector of the underworld is pretty profound,” Voll says. “They all pose for the photographs--let’s put it that way.” In that sense, the antiabortionists were no different than the Serb warlords. “These people exist. They’re not abstractions,” Voll says. “They’re complicated, charming, seductive and dangerous. I never forget that.”

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“Soldiers in the Army of God” can be seen Sunday night at 10 on HBO. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14).