Published June 8, 2022
On May 2, Politico published a leaked draft of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a draft that would overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Abortion supporters have responded to this possibility with a spate of violent attacks across the country: against churches, against pregnancy-help centers, against the Supreme Court justices apparently poised to issue this ruling.
Shortly after the draft came to light, pro-abortion activists publicized the addresses of the justices reported to be in the majority and began congregating outside their homes to protest. Democratic politicians, including the president, were swift to hand-wave away this disturbing development.
“I think the president’s view is that there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that leaked document,” said former White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
One such “passionate” individual was arrested early this morning near Brett Kavanaugh’s house, allegedly armed with a tactical knife and a Glock 17. According to an affidavit, he said he intended to kill Kavanaugh in response to the possibility that Roe might be overturned.
For five weeks now, we’ve watched pro-abortion activists organize coordinated and dangerous attacks, one after another, against pro-lifers. Pro-abortion activist group Ruth Sent Us organized an effort to storm Catholic Masses and other religious services. Activist organization Jane’s Revenge, meanwhile, has undertaken a systematic campaign to vandalize and destroy pregnancy-resource centers from coast to coast: a fire-bombing in Buffalo, graffiti and broken windows in Seattle, attempted arson in Oregon, vandalism in Washington, D.C., arson in Illinois, graffiti in Northern Virginia, Molotov cocktails in Wisconsin, and the list goes on.
Abortion supporters regularly parrot the provably false claim that pro-lifers care about babies only until they’re born, that we do nothing to meet the needs of women. At the same time, they direct their most vicious attacks toward the very pro-lifers who put the lie to this argument. For decades, pregnancy-resource centers have offered pregnant mothers financial, material, and spiritual support so they can choose life for their children. With the Court poised to do away with Roe, it is abortion supporters threatening and intimidating those who would offer that crucial support.
An attempted assassination of a Supreme Court justice and a coordinated, systematic vandalism campaign against pro-lifers are the latest poisonous fruit of a poisonous ruling, one that wrenched the abortion debate from the hands of Americans and allowed nine unelected justices to prevent the entire country from protecting human beings in the womb. Abortion supporters, accustomed to having their preferred regime entrenched by the Court, have little interest in the hard work ahead of them to preserve abortion if Roe is abolished. The most “passionate” among them evidently would prefer to fix the problem with sheer power, with intimidation, with physical violence.
It is little wonder that the lethal violence of abortion, perpetrated against the most innocent and defenseless members of the human family, would propagate more violence, that the most faithful adherents to the cult of abortion would shore up their position with threats of death and destruction.
Alexandra DeSanctis is a staff writer for National Review and a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash
EPPC Fellow Alexandra DeSanctis writes on culture and family issues, with a particular focus on abortion policy and pro-life advocacy, as a member of the Life and Family Initiative.
