Becoming Ungovernable

For Abortion Activists, Violence is the New Go-To Method of Persuasion

The prospect that the Roe v. Wade ruling might possibly, finally, meet its much-deserved end and be overturned, thus sending the matter back to the several states for their respective legislatures to decide, had already begun to stir up fear and hatred among the pro-abortion crowd weeks before the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked to the press.

As reported by Students For Life of America (SFLA) on March 22:

Our students and staff were shoved, berated, punched, and degraded all due to our stance on life. This did not come as a shock to us as the abortion lobby has become progressively more aggressive. With Roe v. Wade potentially on the chopping block, abortion supporters are both quivering in fear and striking out in violence. However, while SFLAction has much experience with violence, what we faced at this protest marks a violent change from those who agitate for the violence of abortion.

Note here a couple of things: the folks from Students for Life America are no strangers to facing violence from pro-abortion agitators on the frontlines of political activism, and the SFLA was not out in front of the Supreme Court to advocate on the Dobbs case. They were there to protest the confirmation of Judge Kentaji Brown-Jackson to the Supreme Court.

Certainly, they were clear that Brown-Jackson’s support for the barbaric practice of abortion was a ground for their opposition to her confirmation. So, the prospect that the decision on the Dobbs case might be unfavorable to the preservation of the Roe v. Wade regime alone was enough to lower the threshold for committing violence among the pro-aborts.

This was, predictably, an acrid foretaste of poison to the body politic soon to be unleashed by the pro-abortion crowd.

Violence to Truth & History

After the leak began making its rounds in the first week in May, the pro-aborts became even more unhinged. As reported by the inimitable Andrew Klavan on May 7^th, the Biden Administration sprang to attack the draft opinion before the President had even read it, and in his attacks on the (as yet unpublished) ruling, President Biden himself grossly and mendaciously distorted Judge Robert Bork's views on natural law and the origin of human rights in order to make the patently absurd claim that he (Biden) was defending the idea that our rights are endowed by God, not granted by the government. Yes, Joe Biden wants us to believe that he, not Robert Bork, was the defender of the proposition advanced in the preamble of our Declaration of Independence. Rich, eh?

Violence to People Defending Life

While Biden and his press secretary were doing violence to the historical record, though, Biden voters and other pro-abortion activists were doing real violence to real people. Live Action, the pro-life group which came to national prominence through sting operations exposing malfeasance inside Planned Parenthood abortion centers, published a list of attacks on pro-life groups, facilities, and churches that took place on Mother’s Day weekend.

Herb Geraghty Executive Director of Rehumanize International, recounted to Live Action:

I have seen first-hand my fellow pro-lifers shoved, punched, pushed/pulled to the ground, had our signs stolen out of our hands and used as weapons against us, and more. Just within the past week we’ve seen multiple sexual assaults with pro-abortion demonstrators intentionally groping the breasts and genitals of (in particular, our female and gender nonconforming) pro-life activists, including even minors in Indiana. While we have been greatly saddened (and some of us, actually traumatized or re-traumatized as a result of past experiences) by these pro-abortion attacks — we are not really surprised.

In its reporting on the recent spike in public attacks, the Catholic News Agency gave a state-by-state breakdown of vandalism and other physical attacks on churches and pro-life organizations in the first two weeks of May.

The Daily Wire published a similar list of attacks on churches and pro-life organizations, including an attack on the offices of Concerned Women for America in Alexandria, Virginia. CWA’s Press Secretary described the recent escalation of assaults on the organization’s personnel:

Over the past several weeks, employees have had hot coffee cups thrown at them while inside our gated parking garage, along with ongoing vulgar gestures and confrontational rantings made toward them…These things have happened not once but several times. It escalated after the Alito leak.

During protests in Los Angeles, pro-abortion extremists attacked police officers and their vehicles, sending at least one officer to the hospital.

“More of This”

Mobs attacking pro-life pregnancy centers around the country were following prompts like that of Rewire News Group Reporter Caroline Reilly, who urged “more of this. may these people never know a moment of peace or safety until they rot in the ground” following the fire bombing of the Wisconsin Family Association's headquarters.

Reilly is not a lone voice calling for criminal acts and violence, Her incitements have been echoed by national pro-abortion organizations on social media, with threats that activists will be "ungovernable", “ungovernable” being the state in which left-wing rioters left places like Portland and Minneapolis during the fiery and not-at-all-peaceful protests seen around the county in 2020.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, in a public speech given in her official capacity, issued a “call for arms” to “fight until victory” against the roll-back of Roe v. Wade, should it come. Given the context in which these remarks were made, it was hardly a stretch for national pro-life organizations to call pro-abortion rhetoric 'mind-boggling...incendiary and irresponsible".

One might, however, want to pause and think for a moment about what would really happen if the draft ruling from the Supreme Court is in fact the final decision. Namely, the question of abortion would simply be thrown back to state legislatures and decided there. The violence coming against pro-lifers already is meant to intimidate courts, legislators, and citizens in advance - to threaten property damage, injury, or death, instead of making persuasive arguments in favor of their preferred public policy.

This seems to have become the political left’s preferred mode of political action since …approximately mid-November 2016. Violence is to many on the left no longer the instrument of last resort, but the first. Since this is so, pro-lifers would do well to acquaint themselves with peaceful and lawful means of self-defense in the coming weeks.