The UK government has included being “anti-abortion” as one of the benchmarks of potential future terrorism, according to Right to Life UK.
The government’s counter-terrorism strategy includes Prevent, a preventative training to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. It is aimed at individuals who work in education, health, local authorities, police, and criminal justice. The training is said to focus on “Islamist and extreme right-wing ideologies” and includes examples of what it considers “single-issue ideologies” that can lead to terrorism.
“Narratives are likely to come from those who seek to change a specific policy or practice, as opposed to replacing the whole economic, political or social system,” the training states. ”Examples include, animal rights, anti-abortion or anti-fascism. Single-issue narratives can be politically agnostic, meaning they may be neither right nor left aligned.”
Right to Life UK spokesperson, Catherine Robinson, said in response, “The Government are explicit that they believe that being pro-life is a potential ideology leading to terrorism. There has not been a single instance of anti-abortion terrorism in British history. It is a grave insult and sign of deep intolerance that the Government, via Prevent training, implies that being pro-life is potentially the beginning of the road towards terrorism.”
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The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) also stands accused of labeling pro-lifers as terrorists. Pro-life activist Mark Houck, a Catholic father of seven, was arrested by multiple FBI agents in tactical gear at gunpoint in September 2022 in front of his children and wife for allegedly violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.
Houck told Live Action president and founder Lila Rose, “[It was] an act of terror designed to humiliate, intimidate and instill fear in us and they’ve effectively done that with our children to this day, but [to] instill fear in pro-life America, right? Because this is now becoming an overreach of government.”
Houck was acquitted of all charges, but he’s not the only pro-lifer being targeted. Despite the surge in attacks against pro-life organizations, the DOJ has been targeting pro-lifers for supposed “extremely dangerous behavior.” As previously reported by Live Action News:
In its campaign, the DOJ is using the [FACE Act] to prosecute certain pro-life activists, most of whom have been arrested for non-violent violations like sitting in front of or within an abortion facility. According to the Post, ‘the Justice Department has brought 20 criminal prosecutions and one civil case under the FACE Act against a total of 46 defendants, according to federal officials, with all but one of the cases involving charges for disruptions at abortion clinics’. The lone outlier was a case of pro-abortion activists arrested for vandalism at three Florida pregnancy resource centers last year.
Currently, a number of pro-lifers convicted of obstructing an abortion facility face up to 11 years in prison. Meanwhile, the pro-abortion activists behind threats of violence and the many abortion advocates responsible for arson, broken windows, spray-painted walls, and broken signs at pro-life organizations remain largely unsolved and unprosecuted.
In light of the DOJ’s targeting of pro-lifers, the pro-life organization 40 Days for Life has formed a quick response task force — 40 Days for Life Legal — to handle the increasing number of interview requests the organization is receiving from both federal and local law enforcement around the nation.
