Security cameras videotaped three men breaking into Routh Street Women's Clinic about 5:30 a.m. Sunday.

They used a large crowbar to pry open the locked steel exterior door to gain entrance, then forced office doors inside the clinic on Central Expressway, north of Fitzhugh Avenue, and ransacked desks.

The intruders took a laptop computer and docking station from one of the offices and made off with several small bottles of a mild anesthetic that they may have thought was a narcotic.

"We don't have any narcotics," said Ginny Braun, clinic director. "And we don't have any money."

Workers were busy around noon Sunday installing new doors.

Braun had vacuumed after the patrol officers and crime scene technicians left and was straightening things – office equipment mostly – that the burglars had disturbed.

The burglars did not leave behind anti-abortion graffiti or other signs that this was anything more than a for-profit burglary.

But, like abortion providers everywhere, clinic staffers are especially security-conscious after the May 31 murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kan.

Tiller, 67, had performed abortions for more than 20 years and was one of a handful of doctors who performed controversial late-term abortions.

It was not clear whether the burglars at the Routh Street Women's Clinic were just looking for portable, pawnable valuables or whether they were targeting sensitive information on the laptop.

Braun said whoever took the laptop wouldn't be able to access files on it.

She will report the break-in to the National Abortion Federation, which maintains a database of incidents involving abortion providers, including violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act of 1994.

A spokesman for the federation did not return calls for comment Sunday, but its Web site lists violations of the act, which include intentionally damaging "a facility that provides reproductive health services."

The FBI could get jurisdiction of the burglary if investigators determine that the crime falls under federal provisions of the FACE Act.

The clinic opened on Routh Street in 1978, according to the staff, and kept the name after moving twice.

The investigative unit at the Dallas Police Department's Central Patrol Division confirmed Sunday afternoon that the case had been assigned to a detective in that unit and the investigation was under way, but no details were made available.