Remembering Dr. Britton

By Anne H. Oman
Reporter At Large
October 25, 2021

Dr. John Bayard Britton

Now that abortion is once again front and center – in the Supreme Court, and in the Florida legislature –and passions on both sides of this thorny issue are rising, it seems a good time to retell the story of a Fernandina physician who was felled by those same passions some 27 years ago.

Early on the morning of July 29, 1994 a Fernandina Beach family practice doctor named John Bayard Britton flew to Pensacola. He was met at the airport by retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel James H. Barrett, a volunteer bodyguard who was to escort him to the Pensacola Ladies’ Center, an abortion clinic. Both men wore bullet-proof vests. Dr. Britton’s was homemade, and he carried  .357 Magnum. But as Col. Barrett’s pickup truck pulled up at the clinic shortly before 7:30 AM, anti-abortion activist and one-time minister for two conservative Presbyterian sects, Paul Hill aimed his shotgun at the men’s heads, killing them both and wounding Col. Barrett’s wife, a nurse, who was in the back seat. (The shooter later explained that he had aimed for the head because he suspected the victims were wearing protective vests.)

Apprehended about 500 feet from the clinic, an unrepentant Mr. Hill told arresting officers: “I know one thing, no innocent babies will be killed in that clinic today.” Later, he invoked the golden rule to justify his actions: “The Christian principle is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If an abortionist is about to violently take an innocent person’s life, you are entirely morally justified in trying to prevent him from taking that life.”

The mainstream pro-life community quickly distanced itself from that sentiment.  “The pro-life movement has no room for violence or vigilantism,” said the Rev. Pat Mahoney, of the anti-abortion Operation Rescue.

So, who was John Bayard Britton and why was he at this clinic clear across the state from his home base?

Born in Boston in 1925, John Bayard Britton graduated from the University of Virginia and its medical school. After service in the U.S. Army in Korea and a stint teaching at the Medical College of Georgia, he settled in Fernandina Beach and opened an office on North 14th Street across from the old Humphreys Memorial Hospital, where he delivered babies and performed surgeries. One native-born Fernandinan remembers going to this office for camp physicals and treatments for poison ivy. Said another life-long resident: “If you needed stitches, he was the one to go to — a great reputation for scar-less.”

“He was our family doctor for a bunch of years,” said another life-long resident. “We’d go to him if we had a cold, anything. We were in the commercial fishing business, and if any of our employees got sick, we’d send him to Dr. Britton.”

Dr. Britton – “Bayard” to friends – and his wife, Faith Murray Britton, an accomplished artist who had studied at the esteemed Black Mountain College with Josef Albers and others, built a house in the woods along Egan’s Creek off Citrona Drive, and hosted frequent parties.

“The house always seemed sort of unfinished, but it was a good group of people.” recalls one attendee. “Faith, who had studied ballet, sometimes danced. This was in the sixties, when we first came down here.”

Another long-time resident tells of an evening spent around a table telling ghost stories.

“All of a sudden, the table started rising,” she said. “And of course, it was Bayard…. Let me tell you a story about how wonderful he was. I had a dog that I loved – a mutt. He used to run in the woods, and one day, a hunter shot him. I didn’t have a vet, so I called Bayard. He met me outside the hospital and rolled the dog up in a big sheet and took him inside and removed the bullet.”

But John Bayard Britton – giver of parties, teller of ghost tales and savior of pets– was never fully accepted by the local medical establishment.

“He was a character, not a saint,” said one local physician. “He drove around in an old pickup truck.”

“John sort of marched to a different drummer,” said another physician, now retired. “He was brilliant, but just bizarre.”

But eccentricity may not have been the whole story.

According to the Associated Press, Dr. Britton had twice been placed on probation by the state medical board – in 1966 for an alleged affair with his receptionist, a former patient, and in 1982, for overprescribing opioids to a drug abuser.

Dr. Britton disputed the opioid charges but “on the advice of an expensive lawyer” accepted two years of probation, according to a profile entitled “The Abortionist,” published by GQ magazine in February, 1994.

He also lost staff privilege at Humphreys Memorial Hospital for reasons that could not be determined.

“I don’t know why – I didn’t go to board meetings,” said a retired nurse who had worked with Dr. Britton at Humphreys. for seven years, “probably longer.”“He was odd, but he did his job,” she told the Observer.

“Like in the ER, when we were finished suturing, he’d take the sutures off the tray and wrap them up. I didn’t question him – we were going to throw them away anyway. I was the head nurse on the floor, and I thought he did everything proper. When I made rounds with him, the patients seemed to like him – he answered all their questions. As far as I’m concerned, he was a good doctor.”

But patients drifted away.

“I stopped going to him, but I still liked him as a friend,” said one former patient.

The resultant loss of income, coupled with a bad investment, put him in a financial bind. So in 1993, after the murder of abortion provider David Gunn outside a Pensacola clinic, Dr. Britton began flying to Pensacola every Friday to perform abortions at the Pensacola Ladies’ Center. On Saturdays, he went to the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Tallahassee for the same purpose. He viewed abortion as a last resort, and sometimes told women to think more about the decision to have one and come back the next week if they hadn’t changed their minds. But he believed the decision was the woman’s, and called anti-abortion protesters “fanatics.”

“I made a living doing abortions,” Dr. Britton explained in the interview with GQ. “I did them because I thought they should have been done; I wouldn’t have done them otherwise. But I will say I had no money to feed my family.”

Dr. Britton’s funeral, at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on Atlantic Avenue, drew both mourners and hecklers.

“I remember going around into the church and being shocked at the demonstration going on against a murdered man,” one life-long St. Peters member told the Observer.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, about 200 mourners crowded the church while two dozen policemen kept the protesters at bay outside. Family members wore yellow ribbons and were escorted by armed police, as was Vanita McKinney, Dr. Britton’s live-in companion for ten years. (His wife, Faith, died in 1983.) As the congregation inside the historic old church sang “Amazing Grace,” and a former patient eulogized Dr. Britton as “a perfectly lovely man and a wonderful doctor,” the protesters screamed “Mass murderer” and “Baby Killer.” Some hoisted placards condemning “Fem-Nazis,” and one man carried a giant marksmanship trophy for the shooter.

Dr. Britton was buried next to his wife, Faith, in her family’s small cemetery on Edisto Island off the coast of South Carolina. The small, flat gravestone reads: “Let us not love with word or with tongue but in deed and truth.” 1 John 3:18.

Paul Jennings Hill was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder, and sentenced to death. On September 3, 2003, some sixty anti-abortion protesters gathered outside the state penitentiary at Starke, holding a prayer vigil and carrying signs calling Gov. Jeb Bush a “baby killer’s helper”. At 6 pm, despite a letter to Governor Bush from Dr. Britton’s step-daughter, Catherine Britton Fairbanks, asking that the sentence be commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and to “please stop the killing,” the prisoner was executed by lethal injection. His last words: “The last words I want to say, if you believe abortion is a lethal force, you should oppose the force and do what you have to do to stop it. May God help you to protect the unborn as you would want to be protected.”

But the final word on the issue that led to the deaths of both Dr. Britton and Mr. Hill has yet to be written. On November 1, the U.S. Supreme Court will discuss a Texas law that prohibits abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, often as early as six weeks into pregnancy. On December 1, the Court will consider a Mississippi statute designed to reverse the landmark 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade. And, come January, the Republican-dominated Florida legislature will take up “The Florida Heartbeat Act,” HB 167, introduced by Rep. Webster Barnaby (R-Deltona).

Like the Texas law, the Florida legislation would allow members of the public to sue anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion. Unlike the Texas law, the Florida bill, as currently drafted, allows exceptions in the case of rape, incest, domestic violence, human trafficking, or when denial of the procedure would “create a serious risk of substantial and irreversible bodily function.”

12 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Robert Warner
Robert Warner (@guest_62962)
2 years ago

Vigilante justice used as a mechanism to escape oversight and force one’s subjective religious/moral beliefs on others promotes not justice – rather, “Lord of the Flies” anarchy.

Mark Tomes
Trusted Member
Mark Tomes(@mtomes)
2 years ago

There are times when one must heed the call to a higher law, but to murder someone to stop what someone thinks is a murder of someone else is hypocritical and misguided. Also, there is no heartbeat in a fetus six weeks old; there is detection of cardiac activity, but it’s not a heartbeat. Just want to get the facts straight so we can have an informed conversation about the issue.

Thomas Smith
Thomas Smith(@high-n-dry)
2 years ago
Reply to  Mark Tomes

Great news Dr. Mark. I feel better now. So, tell how the six week old child feels while being torn apart. We are called to protect those who are unable to protect themselves. A difficult topic that need not be hash out on a community forum. No winners, just hard feelings.

Teri Springer
Teri Springer (@guest_62972)
2 years ago
Reply to  Thomas Smith

So now YOU are qualified to tell us how a FETUS (not a child) feels because you KNOW?? Seriously? I’ll say to you the same as I said to David: When you grow a uterus you will have the right to decide what happens in THAT uterus and ONLY that uterus. Until then, you have no say in this matter.

I’m betting you wouldn’t like it at all if I got to decide what medical procedures you could or could not have so stop treating women like property. It’s NOT YOUR CALL.

chuck hall
chuck hall(@bob)
2 years ago

such a difficult topic, one decision not to be taken lightly. May God bless and give wisdom and mercy to all involved in such abortions.

Cynthia Fagen
Cynthia Fagen (@guest_62967)
2 years ago

Thank You for your bravery in writing this article. As you must know, this event was not often discussed on the Island. Younger generations of women should know of the struggles for reproductive freedom in the recent past.

terry jones
terry jones(@tjjonez39gmail-com)
2 years ago

it was obvious to me when i met dr britton that he marched to the beat of a different drummer——dr. britton performed my vasectomy some time around 1972——after he was demonstrated the technique by a fellow physician he devised his own technique——–it was quick–painless–just a drop of blood —-no stitches to my scrotum —-a nearly invisible incision & only about 2/3 the price which was (very cheap) of jacksonville doctors—his procedure has been successful for 49 years to date—-to which i am still grateful—–i will always remember & admire him for the compassionate unique & skilled individual he was

DAVID LOTT
DAVID LOTT(@dave-l)
2 years ago

Not sure of the value of this article other than raising an extremely divisive and emotional issue from a biased perspective. No taking of life is justified, whether through abortion, murder or lethal injection..

Teri Springer
Teri Springer (@guest_62971)
2 years ago
Reply to  DAVID LOTT

When you grow a uterus you will have the right to decide what happens in THAT uterus and ONLY that uterus. Until then, you have no say in this matter.

DAVID LOTT
DAVID LOTT(@dave-l)
2 years ago
Reply to  Teri Springer

Teri, I have EVERY right to express my beliefs and such an expression does nothing to interfere with any other person’s belief or actions. I strongly believe in the sanctity of life in all manner.

Your reaction only validates the divisiveness of this issue.

Is you abortion position consistent with your position on a mandated COVID vaccination?

Mary Maguire
Mary Maguire (@guest_62975)
2 years ago

Not often discussed? It was the first story locals told me when I moved to the island in 2011. As for people who think it’s a divisive topic – check your gender.

Melinda joyner
Melinda joyner (@guest_64142)
2 years ago

I just saw this article and read it. I lived in Canton, NC in the late 1960s. Catherine Anne, as her mother always called her, and I were best friends ….we met at Beaver dam Scholl in 4 or 5 th grade…..I sent many weekends in the Britton home…. A glass house of sorts …..with their own pool….Dr Britton was the company doctor for employees of Champion Paper Company…..I loved Catherine and her family…. Louise especially was a wonderfully bright little girl!
I moved with my family in 1959 to Hamilton Ohio….I have been in contact with Catherine several times after reading her book, ” Hiding Behind the Collar”
I wondered why you left out this part of Dr Britton’s life!
Melinda Bramlett Joyner