Antiabortion Extremism

Antiabortion extremists have been committing violence against abortion clinics, reproductive health centers and advocates, victimizing abortion seekers and providers since the 1970s. The violence escalated escalated following the passing of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court case which affirmed the constitutional right to abortion. Antiabortion violence can include violent acts that target proabortion lawmakers and politicians, healthcare providers and patients seeking abortions. These acts of violence continue to be a looming threat over abortion clinics, staff and patients.

War on Women Report: Antiabortion Extremist Charged in S.C. Shooting; Army OB-GYN Accused of Abusing Over 85 Women Patients

PUBLISHED 12/1/2025 by and | UPDATED 12/4/2025 at 9:06 A.M. PT

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide—the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.” We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—North Dakota’s Supreme Court reinstated a total abortion ban, making it the 13th state with a near-total ban on abortion.
—Trump ordered Catherine Lucey, a woman reporter for Bloomberg, to be “quiet, piggy.”
—The U.S. moved to categorize countries with state-sponsored abortion and DEI policies as violators of human rights.
—Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has sued Planned Parenthood over allegedly “misrepresenting the safety” of abortion pills.
—On Thursday, Dec. 4, an unprecedented law banning doctors from shipping abortion pills takes effect in Texas.
—”The country’s most respected newspaper hosted a conversation about whether women’s equality and freedom was a mistake.”
—Doctor Maj. Blaine McGraw, an OB-GYN at Fort Hood military base in Texas, the third-largest base in the country, is under investigation for sexual abuse against patients. As of Monday, 85 victims have come forward.
—With Jeffrey Epstein survivors watching from the gallery above, the House agreed in a near-unanimous vote to force the release of all files related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender.

… and more.

Arrests in Memphis as Antiabortion Training Camp Sparks New Era of Clinic Blockades

PUBLISHED 11/26/2025 by and | UPDATED 12/9/2025 at 9:29 A.M. PT

Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, is trying to make a comeback by teaming up with antiabortion extremist group PAAU (the so-called “Progressive” Anti-Abortion Uprising group associated with dozens of clinic and pharmacy invasions), to kick off “Rescue Resurrection.” Their stated goal is to revive large-scale clinic blockades with a formal kick-off training and series of events starting Dec. 3 in Memphis, Tenn.

On Friday morning, Dec. 5, approximately 25 individuals participating in the Rescue Resurrection training blockaded the Planned Parenthood health center in Memphis, even though abortion is already banned in Tennessee. Fourteen individuals were arrested.

Terry was one of the leaders of mass clinic blockades that took antiabortion extremism to a new level in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Operation Rescue’s (OR’s) orchestrated blockades in Atlanta, Memphis and Wichita drew massive media coverage. During the sieges, accessing a targeted abortion clinic meant getting through a gauntlet of bodies blocking clinic doors and driveways. Antiabortion activists traveled state to state in order to participate, blockading clinics, going limp when arrested (to represent the “unborn”) and requiring three to four police officers to remove each protester arrested and carry them to waiting police buses.

Novel ‘Truth Is’ Shows What It Really Takes for a Teen to Get an Abortion in 2025

PUBLISHED 11/22/2025 by

Truth Is is a pro-choice novel in every sense of the phrase. Truth’s choice to move forward with an abortion is made early on in the novel and the majority of the book focuses on her life and her choices after her decision.

I hope that years from now, a student picks up this book and reads about the challenges that the book’s main character Truth faces and goes, “Is that really how it was back then?”

For adults who engage with Truth’s story, I want us to consider the limitations we sometimes unknowingly put on young people. I want us to consider the heights young people could reach if they were granted opportunities and community support, the way Truth ultimately does in the novel.

Alliance Defending Freedom Succeeded in Overturning Roe. Now It’s Turning to the United Kingdom.

PUBLISHED 11/14/2025 by

If you follow the fight over abortion access in the U.S., you’ve likely heard of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The powerful nonprofit was instrumental in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. ADF drafted model legislation used to defend Mississippi’s 15-week ban and has long championed policies targeting LGBTQ+ rights, contraception access and same-sex marriage.

Now, ADF is setting its sights across the Atlantic. The organization—which boasts operations in 112 countries—has been quietly expanding its influence in Britain through its new alliance with the right-wing Reform Party, led by populist figure Nigel Farage.

The Reform-ADF partnership is following a familiar playbook: reframing reproductive rights as a free-speech issue. ADF has backed efforts to challenge the Public Order Act of 2023, which established “safe access zones” around abortion clinics—150-meter perimeters designed to prevent harassment and obstruction. Despite broad public support for these zones (77 percent of Britons favor them), Farage and his allies have called the policy a “sinister crackdown on expression.”

“There is a clear pattern here of U.S.-funded antiabortion activists testing the limits of the new U.K. law, seemingly trying to find the most acceptable-looking behavior to gain public sympathy, and then using that to try to tear down the law,” said Karen Wright, public affairs manager for Humanists U.K. “It is deeply concerning to see efforts from outside groups attempting to influence domestic law, particularly when it comes to women’s reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy.”

RFK Jr. Ignores 100+ Studies to Push Abortion Pill Ban—This Is the Mifepristone Explainer You Need

PUBLISHED 11/4/2025 by

Apprehensive OB-GYNs across the country are alerting Americans that Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may withdraw abortion pill mifepristone from the market.

The threat follows the publication of a discredited study on mifepristone by a Project 2025 “think tank.” Medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have called the report “seriously flawed” and accused it of manipulating data. So why would RFK Jr. believe it?

Kennedy “is not a scientist and is entirely political. It’s hard to watch someone with such an important role in this country, who is in charge of some of the most vulnerable people in this country, have a complete lack of respect for the things we hold dear,” said Dr. Kristin Lyerly, a Wisconsin OB-GYN who also practices across the state border in rural Minnesota.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, plans to pour millions of dollars into House and Senate races in the 2026 midterms, in hopes of securing a “trifecta of pro-life administration, House and Senate.”

That’s a complete reversal from what voters have said they want: Since Roe was reversed in 2022, voters in every state with an abortion protection measure on its ballot have overwhelmingly passed it, enshrining the right to abortion into their state constitution—even in deep red states like Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio. 

The War on Women Report: Government Shutdown Continues; Another Woman Denied Emergency Abortion Care; FDA Approves Generic Mifepristone

PUBLISHED 11/3/2025 by and

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide—the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.” We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—Turning Point hosted an event at the University of Alabama advocating the death penalty as punishment for abortion patients.
—After being denied care for her ectopic pregnancy by an antiabortion OB-GYN, a 28-year-old woman in Illinois was forced to travel to multiple hospitals and healthcare centers before receiving life-saving care.
—Vocal abortion opponent Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced the Prohibiting Abortion and Transgender Procedures on the Exchanges Act, seeking to halt any healthcare plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) from funding abortions, even in states that preserve abortion access. 
—The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that judges can decline to marry same-sex couples if doing so goes against their religious beliefs.

… and more.

New California Shield Law Protects Abortion Pill Patients, Prescribers and Pharmacists

PUBLISHED 10/25/2025 by

California’s new shield law, AB 260, represents a bold reimagining of what it means to protect reproductive freedom in a post-Dobbs America. By allowing prescribers and pharmacies to omit identifying information from mifepristone labels—and by ensuring that confidential logs can’t be accessed by out-of-state authorities—the law does more than safeguard privacy. It dismantles the machinery of fear and surveillance that antiabortion extremists have built to track, intimidate and punish people for exercising bodily autonomy. In a nation where a single prescription can become evidence in a courtroom, California has declared: not here.

The legislation’s power lies in its refusal to accept intimidation as the cost of care. It shields patients, prescribers and pharmacists alike, and even mandates coverage of mifepristone regardless of the FDA’s shifting political winds. At its core, AB 260 is both a legal and moral statement—that access to abortion medication is not a privilege to be defended in court, but a right to be protected in law. For anyone navigating pregnancy in hostile states, California’s message carries weight and relief: You can seek care without fear that your name, your doctor’s name or your pharmacist’s name will be weaponized against you.

Trump’s IVF Announcement Fails Families—But Duckworth’s Right to IVF Act Could Deliver

PUBLISHED 10/23/2025 by

Last week’s White House announcement is the equivalent of “politely [asking] companies to add IVF coverage out of the goodness of their own hearts—with zero federal investment and no requirement for them to follow through,” says Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

There is, in fact, an alternative to the Trump plan: The Right to IVF Act, introduced by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, would require employer-sponsored health plans and public health insurance, including Medicaid and military plans, to cover treatments. The bill also addresses discrimination and forbids the restriction of access to IVF based on marital status or sexual orientation.

Republicans have voted it down twice.

The War on Women Report: New Texas Law Targets Abortion Pills; More Planned Parenthoods Close Amid Federal Funding Cuts

PUBLISHED 9/30/2025 by and

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide—the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.” We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—A judge in Missouri is currently deciding whether a proposed amendment that would ban abortion in the state’s constitution can appear on the 2026 ballot … even though Missourians voted just last fall to keep abortion legal in the state.
—The Trump administration announced in August that it would remove gender-affirming care from the health services offered to federal workers.
—Mississippi declared a public health emergency as the state’s infant mortality rate soars to a rate nearly double the national average.

… and more.