You may not know this if you’re not tuned in to conservative media, but the FBI has an agenda to protect abortion clinics and punish conservatives generally and anti-abortion conservatives specifically.
So goes the narrative believed by many anti-abortion advocates, including elected officials like Sen. Ted Cruz, R.-Texas.
A new tipping point in this conservative belief came in June when an anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy center” in Buffalo, N.Y., was set ablaze in what the center’s leaders called a “firebombing.”
The lack of leads on this unwitnessed vandalism — no one was injured, although the building was badly damaged — is viewed by anti-abortionists as evidence that the FBI isn’t taking threats against the pro-life crowd seriously. Not only that, they claim the FBI is aggressively targeting them when they engage in peaceful protests to block access to abortion services.
One primary evidence of that claim is an early October FBI action against Chester Gallagher, who has been indicted on charges of leading a conspiracy to prevent an abortion clinic from providing, and patients from receiving, reproductive health services. By multiple reports across conservative media outlets, FBI agents visited the Tennessee home of Gallagher, “with guns drawn,” only to find him not home.
Chester Gallagher
Gallagher and 10 others were indicted for their self-described “rescue” efforts to save unborn children by blocking entrances to an abortion clinic in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., on March 5, 2021.
The indictment alleges that Gallagher used social media to promote a series of anti-abortion events the first week of March 2021 in the Nashville area. Another alleged co-conspirator began a Facebook livestream broadcast of the clinic blockade, where a narrator told those watching that the person they were blocking was a “mom coming to kill her baby.”
These alleged actions are a violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, also known as FACE. If convicted, seven of the defendants could face up to a maximum of 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release and fines of up to $350,000. The other five defendants could face a year in prison, one year of supervised release and fines of up to $10,000.
Republican senators and Congressmen have joined with anti-abortion activists to decry these charges as a trumped-up attack on God-fearing citizens. They also point to a Sept. 23 FBI action against anti-abortion activist Mark Houck of Pennsylvania as part of this pattern.
On October 12, 40 U.S. senators and Congressmen, including Cruz, sent an open letter to FBI Director Christopher Ray demanding the FBI give an account of their “abuse of the FACE Act, targeting peaceful pro-life leaders while at the same time refusing to pursue arrests for over 150 actual FACE Act violations against pro-life organizations nationwide by radicalized pro-abortion extremists,” according to a news release by the public relations firm Truth PR.
Crisis pregnancy centers often are touted as “clinics,” even though they offer no licensed medical services and are designed to talk women out of having abortions.
For most of the last 50 years of contentious debate about abortion access in America, it is the abortion providers who have the victims of bombings and violence.
Melissa Fowler
Since 1977, there have been 11 murders, 42 bombings, 196 arsons, 491 assaults and thousands of incidents of criminal activities directed at patients, providers and volunteers, according to the National Abortion Federation.
“Many of the people who perpetrate these attacks against abortion providers are members of known extremist and white supremacist organizations and are the same people who stormed the Capitol on January 6 to try and overthrow the government,” said Melissa Fowler, chief program officer of the National Abortion Federation.
Since a draft of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that ultimately reversed 50 years of access to abortion care was leaked last spring, “our members across the country have … experienced an escalation in harassment and threats,” Fowler said. “The National Abortion Federation remains committed to providing our members with comprehensive security support to protect their safety and ensure they are able to continue delivering essential abortion care.”
The Truth PR news release claims that the Justice Department has refused “to pursue arrests for over 150 actual FACE Act violations against pro-life organizations nationwide by radicalized pro-abortion extremists.” No listing of these 150 violations was provided.
Jim Harden, who is described as a “pro-life strategist” with the CompassCare network of crisis pregnancy centers — including the one apparently vandalized in Buffalo — is quoted in the news release saying Democrats are running scared before the midterm elections, fear losing power and fear going to jail.
“Pro-abortion political elites are attacking pro-life people not because they are dangerous criminals but because the core pro-life belief undermines their power over the masses.”
“Pro-abortion political elites are attacking pro-life people not because they are dangerous criminals but because the core pro-life belief undermines their power over the masses,” he said. “Absolute power is the power to decide who lives and who dies. This core pro-life belief is such a threat to pro-abortion politicians because once that belief seeps into the hearts and minds of the citizens, it will cause the pro-abortion collaborators to 1) lose their potential of absolute power, the ability to control who lives and who dies; and 2) be indicted on conspiracy to deprive citizens of their rights, and maybe even go to jail.”
Thus, the news release claimed, “the pro-abortion Hydra is pulling out all the stops, failing to investigate violence against pro-lifers, weaponizing the FBI and legislature against them, and censoring them. Why? Because if the Republicans win the midterms and gain control of the House and Senate, they will have the ability to engage real investigations into conspiratorial crimes committed by law enforcement, government, big tech and pro-abortion extremists against pro-life people.”
Then it quotes Harden again: “Abortion is merely a smoke screen used by pro-abortion politicians to preserve and increase their power over the American people. Anyone associated with the collusion between pro-abortion politicians, big tech, law enforcement and pro-abortion terrorists to deprive pro-life citizens of their 14th Amendment rights of equal protection, and First Amendment rights of freedom of religion and speech, ought to be indicted not just for the sake of preborn babies and pro-lifers but for the sake of all Americans.”
All this has been prominent news on conservative talk radio and television, including Fox News and an array of lesser-known websites and news services. These have been published with headlines such as these:
- Charlie Kirk Show: “Charlie Responds to Biden Regime Censorship”
- Daystar: “Exposing Abortion: A Dark Threat and a Bombed Pregnancy Center”
- Tucker Carlson: “Biden is Cracking Down on Political Opponents”
- The Absolute Truth: “How Abortion Activists are Targeting Pro-Life Centers”
- Sean Hannity Show: “When the Left Attacks”
- Battlefront Frontline: “As Pro-Abortionists Scour the Nation the Marxist Hand of Death Signs Orders”
- Huckabee TV: “Pregnancy Center FIREBOMBED by VIOLENT Extremists!”
- Glenn Beck: “Why his Attack PROVES the Left’s Losing the Abortion Debate.”
Related articles:
Jesus would turn over tables in this Crisis Pregnancy Center | Opinion by Julia Goldie Day
Roe v. Wade, the great divider | Analysis by Erich Bridges
Alito and public opinion reveal the link between Roe and a broader white Christian nationalist agenda | Opinion by Robert P. Jones