As threats, arson and even assassinations target abortion providers, Republicans are working to repeal the only federal law that stands in the way.
Early Saturday morning, news broke of the assassination of Melissa Hortman, a Democratic Minnesota state legislator and former speaker, along with her husband Mark, at their home. State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette were also shot multiple times at their home; both survived and are fighting for their lives following emergency surgery.
Vance Luther Boelter—the suspect in the shootings, who posed as a police officer to gain entry to both residences—was apprehended on Sunday night after what police chief Mark Bruley called “the largest manhunt in state history.” Boelter also went to the homes of two other lawmakers between the two shootings, trying to enter four houses in total. According to law enforcement sources, Boelter had a list of more than 50 additional “targets”; the list was recovered from his vehicle abandoned at the scene of the second shooting after police confronted him in an exchange of gunfire. The list included other Democratic officials, some from outside Minnesota, as well as abortion facilities and leading abortion rights advocates in the state.
Although we don’t yet know if his extremist views on abortion (he gave “sermons” at evangelical churches in the U.S. and in the Congo, where he criticized American churches for not doing more to oppose abortion) were the driving cause in his murderous rampage, it is proof of the ongoing threats to abortion providers in this climate of escalating political violence.
Yet, just weeks after the suicide bombing of a Palm Springs fertility clinic, and despite rising rates of threats and violence against abortion clinics after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to advance HR 589, the FACE Act Repeal Act of 2025. The bill would repeal the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a statute protecting clinicians’ and patients’ right to safely provide and access reproductive healthcare. All Democrats on the committee voted against the proposed bill.
“It’s outrageous the GOP is working to repeal the FACE Act at a time when clinics, doctors and patients are experiencing an increase in arson attacks, bomb threats, death threats, blockades, invasions and other forms of violence and harassment,” said duVergne Gaines, director of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Clinic Access Project.
In response to a claim by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who sponsored the FACE Act Repeal Act, that there are other ways to prosecute people engaged in clinic violence, such as state laws, and that “we don’t need a federal statute” that allows people to enter clinics freely, Gaines explained, “Often these attacks are orchestrated and waged by extremists who cross state lines, making federal jurisdiction essential to bringing these domestic terrorists to justice.”
Since the early 1990s, extremists associated with the network known as Army of God, have traveled across state lines to murder abortion providers and bomb and arson clinics. In all cases, federal law enforcement resources to investigate and apprehend the extremists were crucial to securing convictions.
“Given the threat to the federal FACE law, we urge abortion access states to pass their own FACE Act corollaries without delay—states need to step up and commit to protecting providers and patients from antiabortion violence,” Gaines added.
The FACE Act, passed with strong bipartisan support and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994, prohibits “violent, threatening, obstructive and destructive conduct” with the goal of blocking a patient or doctor from obtaining or providing reproductive healthcare. It also makes it illegal to intentionally damage or destroy a reproductive health facility, as well as prohibiting interfering with people’s right to express their religious freedom at a place of worship.
After the FACE Act passed in 1994, clinics immediately reported a decrease in violence. (Twenty percent of clinics reported severe violence in 1999 and 2000 compared to 52 percent in 1994, according to data from the National Abortion Federation, or NAF.)
However, clinic violence rates have been steadily rising over the 25 years since then.
After the Dobbs decision in 2022, clinic violence spiked—reaching a record high in the U.S., according to NAF’s 2024 report, which described:
- 296 death threats or threats of harm against abortion providers,
- 777 cases of clinic obstruction, and
- 621 cases of trespassing in the last two years.
During last week’s Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Roy claimed that, with the FACE Act, the federal government “has inserted itself in a way that has now been used and politicized and weaponized against people across this country, including people of faith, and is doing so with a very specific and biased purpose.”
Roy claimed that although the FACE Act prohibits obstruction of places of worship as well as obstruction of reproductive healthcare clinics, “the Biden-Harris administration disproportionately used the FACE Act to target pro-life Americans.” He claimed that only 8 percent of FACE Act cases filed under the Biden administration were against protestors at “pregnancy resource centers” (also known as fake clinics or crisis pregnancy centers, which often have religious ties and use misleading tactics to intentionally try to dissuade patients from abortion).
Data from the Feminist Majority Foundation’s 2022 National Clinic Violence Survey shows that one-third of clinics surveyed reported severe antiabortion violence the same year as Dobbs, the highest rate in over two decades.
Sixty-nine percent reported daily disruptive protests targeting their facilities, and 38 percent reported an increase in harassment and violence immediately following the Dobbs decision.
In 2022 and early 2023, extremists firebombed a Planned Parenthood in Costa Mesa, Calif., and burned down clinics in Casper, Wyo., and Peoria, Ill.
FMF’s survey also shows that abortion clinics located near fake clinics experience a higher-than-average level of threats and violence, since fake clinics intentionally set up shop near real reproductive healthcare facilities and sometimes act as gathering grounds for antiabortion activists planning their clinic attacks.
Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) pointed out that Trump’s DOJ is openly planning on politicizing FACE to support their own antiabortion goals. In January of this year, Trump pardoned 23 known antiabortion extremists, who were in prison for invading and blockading clinics and violently injuring providers and clinic staff. At the same time, the DOJ ordered prosecutors to stop enforcing the FACE Act in abortion cases except under “extraordinary circumstances,” essentially opening the door for extremists to continue harassing abortion clinics with impunity. That same week, Roy and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) reintroduced their legislation attempting to repeal the FACE Act entirely.
Roy and other Republicans have claimed that the FACE Act violates antiabortion protesters’ First Amendment rights. However, the First Amendment does not protect free speech that incites violence, and it does not cover the 296 death threats that abortion providers have faced since 2023.
In response, Rep. Deborah Ross (D-N.C.) clarified the FACE Act “prohibits conduct, not speech.” She explained that the FACE Act is crucial because the extreme politicization of abortion in this country means that clinics cannot necessarily rely on local police and prosecutors for help, especially in antiabortion states. Ross also noted that because the FACE Act protects access not only to clinics but also to places of worship, she is currently working to secure extra security for synagogues in her district amid rising anti-Semitism.
Although the FACE Act Repeal Act has passed the House’s Judiciary Committee, it still has to make its way to the floor of the House for a full vote, then to the Senate before landing on Trump’s desk to officially become law.
