Abortion Clinics Prepare For New Wave Of Violence

The national network of abortion providers sent a security alert to clinics in the Washington, D.C. area, warning of possible unrest and violence connected to an extremist group’s plans to protest outside the Health and Human Services building on Thursday.

Rescue Resurrection said on its website that the protest will call on the Trump administration “to take decisive action to restrict and ultimately ban the abortion pill.” Mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortion, has been at the center of Republican attacks since access to abortion pills by mail increased the number of abortions in the U.S. since the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Randall Terry, founder of Rescue Resurrection and a notorious far-right anti-abortion leader, invited followers to get arrested with him on Thursday, which would have been the 53rd anniversary of Roe.

The protest announcement replaced a different plan for action that had been on Rescue Resurrection’s site: a “national day of rescue” around the country, which would have involved coordinated attacks on clinics nationwide. “Missionaries in their respective cities will hold protests and perhaps civil disobedience of some kind in defense of the unborn, with bold new ideas and tactics,” read an event description published on the group’s website, which has since been deleted.

The National Abortion Federation security team has identified at least one planned blockade of a D.C. abortion clinic by anti-choice protesters this week, CEO Brittany Fonteno told HuffPost.

Harassment and violence are commonplace for clinic providers and staff — especially during late January, when the Roe anniversary and the March for Life, a massive anti-choice rally in Washington, fall on back-to-back days.

But some abortion rights supporters and providers told HuffPost this year is different because they’re also working against the federal government.

“This is the beginning of a new chapter of violence,” Fonteno said.

A “perfect storm” of extremism has emerged for those working in abortion care, she said. As one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump limited enforcement of the FACE Act, a federal law created to safeguard abortion providers and patients, and pardoned 23 people who were convicted of the charge. Many of the people Trump pardoned are now back harassing and threatening abortion clinic patients and workers. Republicans have also been working to repeal the FACE Act entirely. The policy decision sent a clear message to providers: The federal government will not protect abortion clinics.

NAF sent out a regional security alert, shared with HuffPost, to its clinics in Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland ahead of this week’s planned anti-abortion action. The organization also hosted two community calls about increasing security measures around brick-and-mortar clinics. Fonteno said they are monitoring the situation and working with the one clinic they believe will be targeted to ensure all security precautions are taken.

Some providers have discussed turning patients away or canceling in-clinic care on the Roe anniversary because they don’t want to expose patients or staff to the increased harassment.

Terry, the leader of Rescue Resurrection, is also the founder of Operation Rescue. The group coordinated some of the most violent anti-abortion attacks in the 1980s and ’90s — the same ones that prompted the passage of the FACE Act in 1994.

Rescue Resurrection alludes to reviving the large-scale clinic violence Operation Rescue so successfully executed in the pre-FACE Act era.

“If we believe abortion is murder, we must act like it’s murder. We must respond with courage and sacrifice equal to this crime,” Terry wrote in a letter published on the Rescue Resurrection website. Terry did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

In December, Rescue Resurrection blocked staff and patients from entering a Planned Parenthood health clinic in Memphis, Tennessee, although abortion is completely banned in the state. Seventeen anti-abortion protesters were arrested after a three-day event and “pro-life activist training academy” course hosted by Rescue Resurrection.

The group is part of a widespread increase in threats and violence against abortion providers since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022.

That year, there was a 538% increase in people obstructing clinic entrances, a 913% increase in stalking of clinic staff and a 133% increase in bomb threats, according to an NAF report. A recent report from Abortion Care Network shows that anti-abortion extremists have intensified their attacks by zeroing in on the few remaining clinics in states where abortion is still legal.

It is often hard to get a conviction under the FACE Act, but providers still see it as an important deterrent to increasing anti-choice violence. Abortion providers and advocates told HuffPost they have seen anti-choice protesters become emboldened since Trump gutted FACE enforcement last year.

“It’s very clear that [the FACE Act] won’t be enforced, so it has emboldened some of the people within our communities to potentially try to break local laws and ordinances because there’s no federal teeth to protect us,” said Melissa Grant, COO of Carafem, a reproductive health organization that has abortion clinics in Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Chicago.

“It’s concerning and it’s real,” she added.

Diane Horvath, an OB-GYN and provider at Partners In Abortion Care, said Trump’s pardon of anti-abortion extremists motivated her clinic to rebuild the entire front desk area and install bulletproof windows. Partners in Abortion Care, located less than an hour outside of D.C., used to speak with their local FBI field office regularly.

“We used to have really excellent contact with the FBI, in our local field office … but we can’t even get someone from the FBI to return phone calls,” Horvath said. “Now we can’t even find someone to report to.”

As anti-abortion violence ramps up — seemingly with Trump’s blessing — there’s a growing divide in the anti-abortion Republican camp. Rescue Resurrection’s decision to protest at the HHS building signals to Trump that the most hardline anti-choice groups are unhappy with the administration’s strategy around the abortion pill.

A handful of anti-abortion organizations and leaders have called for Food and Drug Commissioner Marty Makary and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be fired, following a bombshell report from Bloomberg News that the FDA is reportedly slow-walking a safety assessment of mifepristone until after the 2026 midterm elections. The decision to review the abortion pill came after a monthslong pressure campaign from anti-abortion groups, despite the drug’s 25-year safety record.