New report by the National Abortion Federation links rise in threats of violence and death to series of anti-abortion sting videos released in the summer

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Threats of violence and death against US abortion providers soared in 2015, according to a new report by the National Abortion Federation that links the exceptionally hostile climate to a series of anti-abortion sting videos released in the summer.

The group identified 94 specific threats to abortion providers in 2015. In all of 2014, the group identified just one.

“It was frightening and alarming in the breadth and volume of the vitriol,” said Vicki Saporta, the president of NAF. “We could barely keep up.”

The report paints a grim picture of a year that already saw the first deadly attack on a US abortion provider in six years. In late November, a gunman shot and killed three people and injured nine at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood. The suspect in the shooting would later declare himself “a warrior for the babies”.

In the wake of the slayings, several abortion rights groups renewed their longstanding demand for the Department of Justice to investigate violence against clinics and providers as acts of terrorism.

Threats that NAF identified in 2015 include a voicemail to an abortion provider promising to “pull a Columbine and wipe everyone out”. An unidentified man called a North Carolina hospital vowing to “kill all … abortion providers” working there.

Online, a Facebook poster called for an epidemic of arsons. “One person setting fire to an abortion clinic will not do anything but thousands setting fire to an abortion clinic will speak volumes,” he wrote.

Yet another online poster, this one on Fox Nation, called for the head of a biomedical company portrayed in the sting videos to be “hung by the neck using piano wire and propped up on the lawn in front of the building”. NAF passed both online comments to authorities, who questioned the Facebook poster and are prosecuting the Fox Nation commenter.

Instances of protesters physically blocking the entrance to a clinic doubled, and suspicious packages and “hoax devices” found at or near clinics quadrupled. Four clinics, in California, Illinois, Louisiana and Washington state, were the target of arson. And in New Hampshire, a person broke into a clinic and destroyed thousands of dollars in equipment with a hatchet. One abortion provider portrayed in the videos was a target of intimidating protests at her home.



NAF or abortion providers report all the threats it classifies as violent to law enforcement agencies.

In its report, NAF linked the surge in violent threats directly to the videos. Produced by an abortion group called the Center for Medical Progress, the videos used secretly recorded footage to falsely portray Planned Parenthood staff as breaking a federal ban on the sale of fetal tissue. Other videos, which are sealed by court order, contained secret tape of a meeting of National Abortion Federation providers.

The increase in threats that followed, NAF said in its report, prompted the group to hire an online security firm for help tracking the threats.

NAF is suing the Center for Medical Progress and its founder, David Daleiden. More than a dozen states have declined to launch investigations into the videos’ allegations for lack of evidence or concluded investigations that cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing.

Congressional Republicans have launched five separate investigations into the allegations in the videos. One of those panels is seeking the names of hundreds of individuals linked to fetal tissue research, to the dismay of abortion rights advocates on the left.

“It’s one step further than McCarthyism, because McCarthy just threatened people’s jobs,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat from New York, said recently. “They’re threatening people’s lives.”