Boulder, Co. ? Federal agents have stepped up protection of a Boulder abortion doctor after an abortion provider in Kansas was gunned down in church, authorities said Monday.

Police said the U.S. Marshals Service has taken the lead in providing security for Dr. Warren Hern, whose Boulder clinic is one of a few in the nation that provides late-term abortions.

The Marshals Service in Denver confirmed it is involved in a nationwide initiative to protect abortion doctors, but a spokesman declined to give specifics.

The Marshals Service in Washington said Attorney General Eric Holder had ordered it to “increase security for a number of individuals and facilities” because of the Kansas shooting. It gave no details.

Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kan., was fatally shot while serving as an usher on Sunday. A suspect was taken into custody in a Kansas City suburb several hours later.

Tiller, like Hern, operated a clinic that performed late-term abortions.

Tiller had been a lightning rod for anti-abortion groups for decades. A protester shot him in both arms in 1993, and his clinic was bombed in 1985.

On Sunday, Hern denounced Tiller’s killing as the “inevitable and predictable consequence of decades of anti-abortion” rhetoric and violence.

Tiller apparently owned a house in Dillon, a resort town near the Breckenridge ski resort in the mountains west of Denver.

Property records show the house is owned by the Tiller Family Partnership in Wichita, and a phone at the Dillon home is listed to Jeanne Tiller, the same name as Tiller’s wife.

No one answered that phone Monday.

Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput (SHAP’-yoo) and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, two of Colorado’s most prominent abortion opponents, issued separate statements Monday condemning Tiller’s slaying.

Chaput called it an “inexcusable crime.”

“The violence at the heart of every abortion and the abortion industry itself will never be ended by counter-violence,” he said.

Dobson, based in Colorado Springs, said he was shocked by the shooting. He said he didn’t agree with Tiller’s practice but said whoever is responsible for his death should be prosecuted.