Media claims violence against abortion businesses is up, when it’s actually down

(National Review) This week, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) released their 2022 report on violence and disruption at abortion facilities. NAF’s annual report on abortion-facility violence typically receives a great deal of positive and uncritical coverage from the mainstream media. This year’s report proved to be no exception. Indeed, it has already received sympathetic coverage from a number of mainstream media outlets, including CNN, Axios, the Hill, the Huffington Post, and Yahoo! News.

Indeed, media outlets were all too eager to parrot NAF’s spin that there were significant increases in abortion-clinic violence in 2022. However, a closer look at the data contained in the report tells a much different story.

The report lists 15 categories of abortion-facility violence but indicates increases in only five of them between 2021 and 2022. The total number of violent acts directed toward abortion facilities fell by more than 37 percent between 2021 and 2022.

Similarly, the NAF report lists six categories of abortion-facility disruption and indicates […] increases in only two of them. The number of instances of abortion-facility disruption fell by more than 5 percent between 2021 and 2022. It should be noted that the NAF report also indicates a decrease in abortion-facility blockades between 2021 and 2022.

Overall, 2022 was certainly not an outlier in terms of the amount of disruption or violence at abortion facilities.

However, 2022 certainly was an outlier in terms of the amount of violence directed at pro-life groups and pro-life pregnancy help centers. Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision was leaked on May 2, 2022, CatholicVote.org has identified 86 attacks against pregnancy help centers and pro-life groups. The offices of Oregon Right to Life were firebombed, as were pregnancy centers in Gresham, Ore., and Buffalo. N.Y. Furthermore, there have been countless acts of vandalism against pregnancy help centers throughout the country.

Unfortunately, these acts of violence typically receive scant attention from the mainstream media.

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