Burglaries, death threats and acts of arson aimed at U.S. abortion providers rose in 2022, with a “sharp increase” in violence and a 229% increase in stalking incidents, according to a new report from the National Abortion Federation.
The spikes came in a year where the landmark, precedent-setting case Roe v. Wade was overturned, sending the question of abortion’s legality back to individual states. Many Republican-led states have since implemented strict abortion bans starting as low as six weeks, leading to the closure of many abortion providers.
“This is 2022. Its [sic] time to take all the abortionists and burn them at the stake. They are witches,” one online threat to an abortion clinic read, according to the report. The organization, a nonprofit association of abortion providers, recorded a 20% increase in death threats and threats of harm in 2022 compared to 2021.
“Hey it's okay to set fire to abortion clinics! Especially when your assassins for hire are still inside! Preferably when they also cannot escape!” read another death threat.
Hoax devices and suspicious packages intended to inspire fear and terror increased slightly from 71 to 73, as did bomb threats — from nine to 10 in 2022, the report reads. For the first time since 2011, anthrax or bioterrorism threats targeted abortion providers, at least four times.
“You had your time to repent and quit killing babies. To late [sic] late now,” read one letter sent to an Ohio clinic with a suspicious white powder, according to the report. Three Planned Parenthood “coalition partners” in New Mexico received envelopes containing inert ricin, a deadly poison when active.
There were also four arson attacks — in Bakersfield, Calif., Casper, Wyo., Kalamazoo, Mich., and Las Vegas, N.V. — more than the two in 2021, but less than the five in 2020. A Michigan man was sentenced to five years in federal prison in the Kalamazoo case, according to the Department of Justice. And a suspect in Casper, Wyo., was arrested by federal law enforcement in March and charged for the arson there, which delayed the clinic’s opening nearly a year.
“The arson was a traumatic event for everyone, and especially the Casper, Wyo., community because it's a community that hasn’t had abortion care available for 20 years,” said Julie Burkhart, the president of the Wyoming clinic, in a recording published by NAF. “This is a pretty big challenge, not even out of the gate having an arson, and really seeing how people are going to deal with this level of violence.”
Stalkings and burglaries saw the starkest increases of the incidents tracked in the report. In 2022, workers at abortion providers reported 92 cases where staff or patients were stalked to and from the clinic, more than triple the 28 incidents in 2021. Burglaries climbed from 13 to 43 in 2022, a 231% increase. And clinic invasions, when people enter the building, sometimes by force, to “cause disruptions and refuse to leave until law enforcement is called,” rose 25%.
The data gathered by NAF is collected by its member organizations. Incidents were reported by 80% of members and were only included in the data if they could be verified by NAF, “which suggests that actual incidents are higher than reported.”
They noted the data they collect, along with data provided by an external security firm, may have been hampered by anti-abortion activity moving onto encrypted communications apps like Signal, Telegram, Discord, and Session. This “likely contributed to a slight decrease in the incidents of hate email/internet harassment,” which declined from nearly 3,000 in 2021 to roughly 2,400 in 2022.
“In the 2022 statistics, we suspect underreporting in a number of categories, including picketing, hate mail/calls, hate email/internet harassment, obstruction, and trespassing,” the report reads.