Birmingham Recalls 1998 Abortion Clinic Bombing
By: Stephen Crews
Updated: January 30, 2011
How do you measure 13 years? It's nearly 4,800 days, 114,000 hours and almost seven million minutes. But for Diane Derzis it's yesterday.
"It's something you see and you can't believe what you're looking at is this facility," she said.
She remembers the 1998 bombing of her abortion clinic, All Woman, All Women, in Birmingham.
For her all day, every day is a reminder.
The bomb, set off by Eric Rudolph, killed off-duty Birmingham police officer Sandy Sanderson and wounded clinic employee, Emily Lyons, who was standing at the front door. Derzis says the bomb was planted in a flower pot and when Sanderson noticed it, Rudolph, who was standing behind a tree across the street, detonated the bomb.
"He blew him up looking at him," Derzis said. "Sandy saved a ton of people's lives that day."
As for Lyons, Derzis says she's still coping.
"She's doing well," she said. "She still goes through surgeries, and she still has medical problems, but she's hanging in there."
And with a hot-button item like abortion, Derzis says even now, 13-years later, it could happen again. All she says she can do is take it day to day.
"As long as you have that hateful rhetoric, it does create the climate, where someone who's a little unbalanced goes ahead and handles things their way."
