After a pro-abortion organization announced open season on pro-life clinics, the FBI stated it was considering the recent attacks as possible acts of domestic terrorism.
As the Supreme Court prepares to overturn Roe v. Wade, a group known as Jane’s Revenge has claimed responsibility for a wave of vandalism and arson assaults targeting Christian faith-based pregnancy crisis centers.
‘The FBI is investigating a series of assaults and threats targeting pregnancy assistance centers and faith-based groups around the country,’ the bureau stated in a statement.
‘We continue to work closely with our law enforcement partners and will stay alert to safeguard our communities,’ said the FBI.
The organization claimed responsibility for the latest attacks in a letter dated June 14 and posted to the Jane’s Revenge website on Wednesday, citing a fictitious 30-day ultimatum for all pro-life organisations to halt activities, warning them that ‘your thirty days expired yesterday.’
The organization boasted about some of the attacks, including two that occurred on June 7 in Buffalo, New York, when a Christian pregnancy center was firebombed and a Mountain Area Pregnancy Services center in Asheville, North Carolina was vandalized.
The group promised to take ‘increasingly extreme steps against repressive infrastructures’ when the deadline expired, describing how ‘simple and pleasant it is to attack’ the facilities.
The letter warned that “such measures may not come in the shape of anything as readily cleaned up as fire and graffiti.”
Jane’s Revenge, according to the letter, is “not one organization but several,” and has spread “communiqués” around the country, mostly in the Pacific Northwest.
They’ve claimed responsibility for assaults in Madison, Wisconsin, Ft. Collins, Colorado, Des Moines, Iowa, Hollywood, Florida, Denton, Texas, and Washington, D.C., among other places.
They also claimed responsibility for attacks in Portland, Eugene, and Gresham, Oregon, as well as Olympia, Lynwood, and Vancouver, Washington, and Reisterstown and Frederick, Maryland.
The attacks, according to the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life organization, are among at least 40 that have occurred around the country against anti-abortion facilities since May.
The vandalism and arson occur as the United States Supreme Court prepares to rule on an abortion issue in Mississippi later this month.
The ruling may invalidate the famous Roe v. Wade decision from 1973, which established a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
Last Monday, a group of 16 US senators urged the Justice Department to speed up its probe into the assaults.
‘We are deeply concerned that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade in the coming weeks, this trend will continue unless the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the United States Attorneys’ Office take a firm public stance and proactive response against these violent threats,’ the letter read.
On May 8, a Molotov cocktail was thrown through a window of the Wisconsin Family Action office in Madison, Wisconsin, a nonprofit political advocacy group.
Graffiti on the outside of the building included anarchist symbols, the numbers ‘1312’ (which means ‘all cops are bastards,’ and the phrase ‘if abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you.’
Although no one was injured in the incident, authorities described it as a vandalism and arson.
After the attack, an investigative reporter for the online Dutch news site Bellingcat published the first message from ‘Jane’s Revenge.’
‘This is not a declaration of war,’ the statement said. For decades, we have been at war. We did not initiate, and we did not desire, this conflict. We’ve been assaulted for asking for basic medical treatment for far too long. We’ve been shot, bombed, and pushed into motherhood without our permission for far too long.’
The statement also asked that “all anti-choice businesses” be disbanded within 30 days, and that the initial attack was “just a warning,” but that further attacks would follow until “the fundamental right to regulate our own health is back to us.” The group claims to have a foothold in the United States and is capable of carrying out further strikes.’
Similar attacks have been carried out in cities around the country since then.
The Jane Collective, a Chicago-based clandestine abortion network in the late 1960s and early 1970s, inspired the group’s name.