An article recently published in Rolling Stone features the stories of abortion facility escorts, particularly in states where preborn children are protected from abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade. The picture painted is one of never-ending fear due to supposed increasing violence from the pro-life movement. But the reality is the exact opposite.
After Roe
A draft opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked in May of 2022, in which the Supreme Court called for Roe to be overturned. By June, that decision was official. It was a devastating experience, according to escort Karen Musick. “We all knew it was coming,” she told Rolling Stone. “I don’t know how you stop [the tears]. The whole day was tears.” Musick was working at Little Rock Family Planning Services in Arkansas, which closed that day. Still, she said the escorts gathered in the parking lot, determined to fight to keep abortion legal.
“That day I didn’t take off my vest until probably one in the morning,” she said. “We had a rally at the Capitol. A lot of people who were there, we went out to dinner, drank, cursed, swore, and decided ‘We’re not stopping.’”
Others, though, gave up. When Jackson Women’s Health Organization closed after the Dobbs decision, the escorts — who called themselves the Pink House Defenders after the building’s garish pink color — disbanded. “We had lost on many levels, and it was well-known by antis and such, so it was quite demoralizing,” Kim Gibson said. “We’re quote-unquote back to living normal lives.”
Has pro-life violence increased?
Rolling Stone furthered an oft-repeated narrative: that after Dobbs, the pro-life movement became increasingly violent, with abortionists and facility staffers at risk. “According to the National Abortion Federation, violence against clinics and abortion providers has continued to rise following the Roe reversal,” Rolling Stone reported. “In 2022, there were four arsons, 20 clinic invasions, and a 20 percent increase in death threats against abortion providers. Before Dobbs, the last reported anthrax scare involving abortion clinics was in 2011; in 2022, there were four.”
Lauren Rankin, a former abortion business escort, claimed, “[Clinic-focused attacks] began [with] this idea of ‘If we can’t end abortion in the courts, we can punish people at the place where they have abortions.'” Rankin, who has previously written pro-abortion propaganda for Rolling Stone, has also previously argued that pro-abortion violence does not exist.
The real violence
Nowhere in the Rolling Stone article is it mentioned that, in reality, the majority of post-Dobbs violence has been perpetrated by pro-abortion activists, or that this violence has even been downplayed by the DOJ. And this pro-abortion violence wasn’t a new development; even pre-Dobbs, there were numerous reports of pro-abortion violence, even perpetrated by facility escorts, who have assaulted pro-lifers outside of abortion facilities.
Pro-lifers have been threatened with guns (more here, here, and here), knives, and bombs; some perpetrators have actually gone through with those threats, stabbing and shooting pro-lifers. Other pro-life advocates have been punched, kicked, attacked with Molotov cocktails, been victims of home vandalization, and more. Elderly pro-lifers are not exempt from being targeted. Abortion activists have even attempted to run over pro-life advocates as they stand outside abortion facilities.
This only got worse after Roe fell.
A 2022 study from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) found there were 22 times as many attacks against pro-life organizations as pro-abortion organizations. Between May and September of 2022, there were 135 attacks against pro-life groups; comparatively, there were just six attacks against abortion organizations. “The bottom line is that after the Dobbs decision was leaked, there was over 22 times more violence directed against pro-life groups than pro-choice organizations,” the CPRC said. “However, if the media is less likely to cover violence [against] pro-life organizations, the 22 times estimate will underestimate the relative violence against these groups.”
After the Dobbs draft leak, pro-abortion group “Jane’s Revenge” threatened a “Night of Rage,” should Roe be overturned. They kept their promise, carrying out attacks on pregnancy centers, pro-life offices, and churches. Another pro-abortion group, “Ruth Sent Us,” doxxed the Supreme Court justices, organized protests in front of their homes, and made threats against two of the justices’ children. They published explicit directions on how to get to the school Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s children attended, and targeted Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s wife, Ashley, with a tweet that included a picture taken outside her children’s school. This culminated in an assassination attempt against Justice Kavanuagh.
FBI Director Christopher Wray also testified before Congress that 70% of the abortion-related violence and threats after Dobbs has been directed towards the pro-life movement. Rolling Stone did not include this; instead, they cited only a group of abortion facility escorts and the National Abortion Federation.
It’s a shoddy excuse for journalism, and passes instead for pro-abortion propaganda, peddling the same lies and falsehoods that the abortion industry has been repeating for years.
