[The escalation from rhetoric to violence was all too familiar for
reproductive justice advocates. ] [[link removed]]

HOW THE ANTI-ABORTION MOVEMENT FED THE CAPITOL INSURRECTION  
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Tina Vásquez
February 22, 2021
Prism
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_ The escalation from rhetoric to violence was all too familiar for
reproductive justice advocates. _

The U.S. Supreme Court is seen through a broken window at an entrance
of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday. , Alex Wong/Getty Images

 

Reproductive justice advocate Jordyn Close watched with the rest of
the nation on Jan. 6 as Donald Trump supporters invaded the Capitol.
Some were outfitted in tactical gear and had zip ties at the ready.
Others brought nooses and pitchforks and Confederate flags. The
insurrectionists broke windows, ransacked lawmakers’ offices, and
spread feces on the Capitol walls. By the end of it all, five people
died.

The escalation from rhetoric to violence at the Capitol has shocked
many Americans. Close, who works with Unite for Reproductive and
Gender Equity (URGE), is an abortion storyteller with We Testify, and
who serves on the board of the abortion fund Women Have Options Ohio,
is less surprised. Very early into the news coverage of the
insurrection, Close saw a number of familiar faces. Overwhelmingly,
these were white men who—when not trying to overthrow the
government—spend a great deal of their time harassing people outside
of abortion clinics.

“The venn diagram of white supremacists and antis is a circle,”
Close said. Similar sentiments were expressed to Prism by reproductive
health, rights, and justice advocates in Ohio, North Carolina, and
West Virginia, none of whom were particularly shocked to see leaders
in the anti-abortion movement storm the Capitol in support of Trump.
Abortion advocates have long warned that it was only a matter of time
before the rhetoric became violent. 

In his inauguration speech
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on Jan. 20, President Joe Biden said the United States must
“confront and defeat'' political extremism, white supremacy, and
domestic terrorism.” Abortion advocates want to know if this
commitment applies to the threats, harassment, and violent rhetoric
they face from anti-choice movements. The threat of violence has been
unrestrained for decades, minimized or outright dismissed by law
enforcement officials and lawmakers—even as abortion clinics
continue to be a primary target for domestic terrorism
[[link removed]].

Abortion stigma is the primary reason why few in the media or American
public listen to abortion advocates when they warn of the violence
that right-wing movements are capable of. But now that the nation has
seen this violence firsthand, advocates are waiting to see if it will
change anything.

“I don't know at what point people will simply listen to abortion
advocates because we've been the victim of this violence for
decades,” Close said. “Will they listen to us now?”

‘FAR-RIGHT WHITE SUPREMACIST IDEALS’

Since the attempted coup, there has been a slate of reporting from
_Mother Jones_
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__Vice_
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Jezebel
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Rewire News Group
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and_ __The Washington Post_
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about prominent members of the anti-abortion movement spotted at the
coup. But this isn’t about the singular appearance of specific antis
at the storming of the Capitol. Many reproductive justice advocates
have argued that the anti-abortion movement _is_ a white supremacist
movement, but what’s certain is that in recent years the
anti-abortion movement’s many iterations have made inroads with
extreme right-wing groups—including militia movements and white
supremacist groups.  

Renee Bracey Sherman, founder and executive director of the abortion
storytelling group We Testify, said in a statement that anti-abortion
activists “are nothing but white supremacists who organize around
criminalizing abortion.” In fact, she explained, the anti-abortion
movement “came about while trying to maintain segregation in schools
and continued organizing around our nation's long history of
subjugating the reproductive freedoms of Black and Brown people.”

Given the context and the failings of law enforcement officials to
take the threats of anti-choice activists seriously, it’s largely on
abortion access advocates to keep themselves safe. In part, this
requires performing opposition research, or the practice of
identifying anti-choice protestors outside of clinics and monitoring
their online activities to assess the danger they may pose. To help
fill these information gaps, groups like Abortion Access Front have
“amassed a database of anti-abortion extremists from across the
country,” according to the group’s founder, Lizz Winstead.

Abortion Access Front was able to quickly identity at least a dozen
anti-abortion activists who were at the Capitol. The group shared a
document with Prism featuring social media from the antis who were at
the scene, some of whom have ties to militia movements and the extreme
and aggressive anti-abortion group Operation Save America, known for
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harassing abortion providers and demanding that people seeking
abortion care receive the death penalty.

“The leadership of these anti-choice organizations tell the public
they don’t believe in violence, but they can’t have it both
ways,” Winstead said. “They support violence and they use
inflammatory rhetoric like ‘murdering babies,’ ‘slaughtering
children,’ and calling abortion a ‘Holocaust.’ Unless the public
begins to connect these dots and see that it’s the same people
across movements engaging in the same terrorism, the people who
provide abortions are going to be forced to continue fending off this
violence by themselves.”

In one video taken by Jason Storms, the assistant director of
Operation Save America and the founder of Faithful Soldier Training
Camp, he is standing on scaffolding outside the Capitol as the coup is
unfolding and he calls it a “revolution.” Abortion Access Front
also found plenty of footage online from Operation Save America
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regional leader Dave Daubenmire
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who co-founded the Christian militia Minutemen United and runs a
survivalist training camp in Ohio. Tayler Hansen, self-proclaimed
“pro-life” activist and the founder of Baby Lives Matter, filmed
the shooting of fellow insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, doing nothing to
help her as she lay bleeding to death.  

Perhaps most alarming was the presence of two men in particular: John
Brockhoeft and Derrick Evans.

Brockhoeft firebombed a Cincinnati, Ohio Planned Parenthood clinic in
1985 and was convicted of planning to bomb the Pensacola Ladies Center
in 1988. More recently, he has been active
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at Reopen Ohio rallies in response to COVID-19-related shutdowns. At
the Capitol on Jan. 6, Brockhoeft filmed a video of himself declaring
his “love” for Donald Trump as Trump’s voice is heard over
loudspeakers in the background.

Evans, before he was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates
in November, had a long history of harassing patients outside of West
Virginia’s Women’s Health Center, the only abortion clinic in the
state. “Evans was a fixture at the clinic for much of 2019, with a
reputation for harassment so severe that the clinic erected a 10-foot
fence to deter him. A volunteer escort obtained a restraining order
against him, accusing him of stalking her,” _The Washington Post
_reported
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_Known for wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat while
livestreaming his harassment of patients to thousands of followers,
Evans was one of the many insurrectionists who pushed their way into
the Capitol and filmed the crime. Days later he was arrested and
forced to resign from office.

No one on staff at the Women's Health Center of West Virginia was
surprised that Evans participated in the attempted coup, said Katie
Quinonez, the executive director of the clinic. They’ve had to deal
with Evans “up close and personal,” Quinonez told Prism. He
regularly filmed patients’ license plates, and he seemed to do
research on clinic staff and clinic escorts, referring to them by
their first names and shouting out details about them. The implication
seemed to be, “I know who you are and I know where to find you,”
said Quinonez.

Evans’ harassment inspired others to come to the clinic, including
armed members of one of the largest radical anti-government groups in
the nation: The Oath Keepers
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whose tens of thousands of members are former law enforcement
officials and military veterans. Quinonez told Prism that members of
the group once appeared at her clinic “with guns on their hips,”
alleging that they were there to provide protection to anti-abortion
harassers.

The Oath Keepers have their own relationship to the attempted coup. On
Jan. 19, prosecutors filed conspiracy charges
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against members of the Oath Keepers in the Capitol attack, alleging
that three members of the group planned and coordinated ahead of the
January 6 assault.

“I certainly hope the general public is waking up to the fact that
the anti-abortion movement is about far-right white supremacist
ideals—they don’t care about pregnant people, they don’t care
about babies or families. They care about controlling people seeking
health care, LGBTQ folks, and people of color,” Quinonez said.
“When someone is aggresively anti-abortion, it’s not just a matter
of having a different opinion than you. It’s deeply rooted in white
supremacist values.”

BUILDING BRIDGES WITH WHITE SUPREMACISTS

Close told Prism that in Ohio, it is the same people protesting
abortion clinics who are now committed to protesting the federal
government and making threats against the Biden-Harris administration.
During the pandemic, the reproductive justice advocate said she has
gone to Reopen the state rallies in Ohio to counter white
supremacists, only to see anti-abortion leaders like Sarah Cleveland
shaking hands with elected officials and known terrorists like
Brockhoeft.

Cleveland, who was present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, is part of an
emerging segment of the anti-abortion movement that Prism has reported
on
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_in partnership with the social justice think tank Political Research
Associates. Known as “abortion abolitionists,” anti-abortion
activists like Cleveland assert that the pro-life movement is too
secular, abortion constitutes homicide, and that abortion providers
and people seeking abortion care should be subject to the death
penalty. This ideology is largely informed
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longtime leaders in the violent wing of the anti-abortion movement.

Close said that in Ohio, anti-abortion figures like Cleveland are
trying to “build bridges” with white supremacist groups like the
Proud Boys, inviting them to protest outside of clinics.

In fact, when the coup was unfolding at the Capitol, Michelle Davis, a
patient support advocate for Women Have Options Ohio, was actually at
the Columbus, Ohio Statehouse to counter a Proud Boys rally.

Davis told Prism that antis used to pretend they had “the moral high
ground,” but in recent years they have made little to no effort to
hide their ties to white supremacist movements.  

“We’ve had violent Trump rallies in our city and anti-choicers are
always a big part of it. They can operate with impunity, and that
makes me nervous because I know these anti-choice groups are
historically violent,” Davis said, noting that antis have left
anti-choice propaganda on her doorstep and mailed packages to her
home.

ESCALATING VIOLENCE

On the morning of Jan. 6, Calla Hales talked to her father on the
phone while watching the news as mobs of Trump supporters descended on
the Capitol. Hales is the director of A Preferred Women’s Health
Clinic (APWHC) in Charlotte, North Carolina, one of the busiest
abortion clinics in the state. APWHC is the site of large, weekly
anti-abortion protests [[link removed]], orchestrated by
the anti-abortion group LoveLife who are assisted by Philip “Flip”
Benham, the director of Operation Save America who is largely
responsible for bringing “anti-abortion extremism
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to North Carolina. In 2011, the fundamentalist Christian minister was
found guilty of stalking an abortion provider. In 2018, Benham was
arrested outside of Hales’ clinic
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for communicating threats. In 2020, Benham was again arrested outside
of Hales’ clinic
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refusing to disperse during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.

“On the phone, my dad made a joke about how I’d probably see
[Benham] at the Capitol and it wasn’t long after that I actually saw
faces I recognized,” Hales told Prism in a phone interview. “It's
scary and it shakes you, but it’s also frustrating. Many abortion
providers, clinic workers, advocates, and activists have said that
anti-choice protestors are capable of terrorism and their movements
are a breeding ground for racism and violence.”

Kelsea McLain, who coordinates the North Carolina clinic escort group
Triangle Abortion Access Coalition, said she expected to see antis at
the Capitol—especially women. While white men represent the vast
majority of the more extreme wings of the anti-abortion movement,
white women are also very active, yet are reported on far less. In
fact, one of the most prominent anti-abortion figures to first be
identified at the Capitol was Abby Johnson
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the former Planned Parenthood director who has carved out a career as
an anti-abortion zealot.

At the North Carolina clinic where McLain volunteers her time, several
women are the leaders of what McLain called “the most offensive
behaviors.”

“There’s one woman in particular named Sharon Dooley that has
become incredibly pervasive and an abusive presence at the clinic,”
McLain said. “She uses being a white, conservative woman almost as
armor. She escapes accountability and no one listens to us when we say
that she is truly abusive and violent.”

Dooley, who is an avid believer in the QAnon conspiracy theory,
falsely accused a volunteer of assault and has doxxed clinic
escorts— including McLain. Dooley is so committed to harassing
patients outside of the North Carolina clinic that after going to
Washington, D.C. to support Trump on Jan. 6, she returned to harassing
patients outside of the abortion clinic Jan. 7.

As antis more openly embrace extreme right-wing movements and
conspiracy theories that inspire violence, it’s increasingly hard
for reproductive health, rights, and justice advocates to know what
threats to take seriously. McLain said that several months ago she was
sitting in her home looking out her back window when she noticed a
person appear and take pictures of her car. Without thinking, she ran
out to confront them. The person hopped in a car loaded with other
people and sped off.

Close told Prism that she wants the public to understand that
anti-abortion activists are becoming “more radicalized” and
normalizing the idea that violence against providers and clinic staff
is justifiable
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The threat of violence is reaching a boiling point, she said, and it
still seems like only abortion advocates are taking it seriously.

“It’s really easy for people in society not to give a shit about a
person who needs an abortion being harassed,” Close said. “The
stigma around abortion leads a lot of the public to believe that we
deserve this harassment, and we don’t.”

LAW ENFORCEMENT LOOKS THE OTHER WAY

While reproductive justice advocates have long embraced abolitionist
frameworks and many have supported the movement to defund the police,
it’s important to note the role that law enforcement officials play
in the anti-choice movement and their inaction when it comes to the
threats that abortion advocates receive.

McLain said there’s a direct correlation between the way that
insurrectionists were treated at the Capitol and the way members of
the anti-abortion movement are treated outside of clinics where they
harass patients.

“[Anti-choice activists] act like they are immune to repercussions
and to law enforcement because they’ve largely been allowed to
be,” McLain said, noting that the threats experienced by
reproductive health, rights, and justice advocates are almost never
taken seriously. “They truly do whatever they want; they break
whatever rules they want. They’re as abusive as they want to be, and
they know that nothing will ever happen to them because of it. Law
enforcement treats them with the kiddest of kid gloves, so of course
they went to D.C. and stormed the Capitol and thought nothing would
ever happen to them.”

During the attempted coup, the nation watched as police officers
appeared to usher the white mob into what was supposed to be one of
the most secure buildings in the country. Officers were seen gingerly
walking elderly domestic terrorists
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Capitol steps and taking selfies with insurrectionists
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who came from far and wide to overthrow the government and overturn
the results of the election. It has since been reported
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that some of the officers at the Capitol were politically aligned and
in solidarity with the white supremacist and right-wing movements that
attempted the coup.

Needless to say, Close received no such treatment back in May and June
of 2020 when she was assaulted by police officers four times while
participating in Black Lives Matter protests in Columbus, Ohio, after
the police killing of George Floyd. During the worst incident in May,
the reproductive justice advocate said police smacked her phone out of
her hand, knocked her glasses off her face, and kicked her. One
officer grabbed her ponytail, yanked her head back, and shot pepper
spray into her eyes “at point blank range.” In June when Close was
arrested, she was pepper sprayed before being put in the back of a
police cruiser where she remained for six hours.

On the other hand, members of the anti-abortion movement who stormed
the Capitol were so confident that nothing would happen to them, they
livestreamed their crimes. Others who attended Trump’s Jan. 6
rally—now considered one of the nation’s darkest days—have spent
the last several weeks proudly using the day’s events as fodder and
content [[link removed]] for their
social media accounts.  

McLain said it’s clear that anti-choice activists are emboldened,
and it makes her fearful for her safety and the safety of others who
work to provide abortion access in states like North Carolina where
there is a large and active anti-choice movement.

“They were let into the Capitol by the police, and they’re let
into the sanctity of our clinic space every day by the police.
Sometimes we see the cops high-five antis or shake their hands or pray
with them,” McLain said. “The truth is that every day, the police
are protecting anti-abortion harassment in ways that violate
people’s constitutional right to access abortion in every state
around the country. It’s not just a problem here in North Carolina
or in southern states. There is an epidemic of law enforcement
enabling what I think will inevitably be the next domestic terrorist
incident at a clinic.”

 

Tina Vásquez is the senior reporter at Prism. She covers gender
justice, workers' rights, and immigration. Follow her on Twitter
@TheTinaVasquez. [[link removed]]

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