If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade in the coming weeks, it will mark the culmination of a decades-long, multimillion-dollar legal effort by the American conservative movement to end abortion rights and force many pregnant people to give birth.
It will also be the culmination of a multi-decade terror campaign.
From 1977 to 2020 in America, anti-abortion activists committed at least 11 murders, 26 attempted murders, 956 threats of harm or death, 624 stalking incidents and four kidnappings, according to data collected by the National Abortion Federation. They have bombed 42 abortion clinics, set 194 on fire, attempted to bomb or burn an additional 104 and made 667 bomb threats.
To be an abortion provider in the U.S. has meant going to work every morning under the threat of violence. And as Roe stands on the brink, some family members of people lost to this horrific violence are reliving their worst days. A recent leaked draft suggests that in all likelihood the abortion care their loved ones died practicing will soon disappear across much of the country.
As the anti-abortion movement nears a monumental victory, it bears repeating that violence has been an inextricable part of that movement. No one knows this more intimately than those who have lost loved ones to that violence and who are now bracing themselves to live in a post-Roe world — the very world their loved ones’ murderers dreamed would one day exist.
