Violence on rise over abortion issue in US

Since the US Supreme Court overturned a constitutional right to abortion with its decision in Roe v. Wade last year, violence has broken out on both sides of the issue.

The violence started even before the June 24 decision by the high court was announced. A militant group in the state of Wisconsin that claimed to be pro-abortion took the name "Jane's Revenge" after the decision draft of Roe to overturn abortion rights by the Supreme Court was leaked in May.

The group's name is believed to be a reference to the 1970s-era Jane Collective, an underground service in Chicago that provided abortion when it was illegal in the United States, Fox News reported.

On May 8, the office of the anti-abortion group Wisconsin Family Action was set on fire, and the first communique from Jane's Revenge was put online. By July 8, the website of Jane's Revenge had documented about 10 such attacks. However, the site stopped updating such occurrences after that date.

In the past, it has been mostly anti-abortion activists who committed violent acts against abortion providers and facilities, not any group or person claiming to be pro-choice.

Some have expressed skepticism that Jane's Revenge is in fact a pro-choice organization and said it may instead be an anti-abortion group that is seeking to turn people against abortion rights.

Newsweek reported that six months after Roe was overturned, there had been 122 attacks on churches and pregnancy centers, many of them done under the name of Jane's Revenge. The data were collected by the Family Research Council in Washington, DC. It recorded five fire bombings and 47 vandalism incidents.

Katherine Spillar, executive director of the Feminist Majority Foundation, told USA Today recently that she has seen more violent incidents and threats since the overturning of Roe, including people blocking access to clinics, invasions of clinics, arsons, stalking, gunfire, and bomb and death threats.

"It's a coordinated strategy to drive clinics out of existence," Spillar said.

Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis region and Southwest Missouri, told USA Today that she has also seen "new, more threatening tactics" from anti-abortion protesters who have shown up with ladders, cutting ties to fencing, using bullhorns and filling schedules with fake patients to cause longer wait times.

Agencies contributed to this story.