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Thursday, Jun. 30, 2022

Has there been a spate of property damage to anti-abortion organizations following the overturning of Roe v. Wade?

Austin Tannenbaum, Gigafact
yes

Certain pro-abortion individuals and groups have made a coordinated effort to damage the property of churches, crisis pregnancy centers and other anti-abortion organizations following the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion and eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade. On June 14, the militant pro-abortion organization Jane's Revenge, which has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks, declared "open season" on "anti-choice groups."

Estimates of the number of incidents vary. In a June 15 open letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, 126 members of Congress requested that the Justice Department treat such attacks as acts of domestic terrorism, citing 14 examples from the past two months. In a more expansive list, the National Catholic Register documented 49 such acts of vandalism as of June 30.

Anti-abortion individuals and groups, for their part, have a history of attacking abortion clinics, including "11 murders, 42 bombings, 196 arsons, 491 assaults, and thousands of incidents of criminal activities directed at patients, providers, and volunteers," according to the National Abortion Federation. The federation noted a "significant increase" in "violence and disruption against abortion providers" in 2021.

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