It's been nearly a year since the overturning of Roe V. Wade. How are Pro-life Centers handling the shift?
Photo courtesy: Colin Lloyd (Unsplash.com)
It is in the wee hours of the morning on Jun. 7, 2022. Firefighters and police are responding to calls of smoke coming from New York's CompassCare organization. The building was firebombed. Shards of glass form the broken windows and fresh graffiti decorated the Buffalo office. The graffiti held a menacing title now all too familiar to pro-life groups: "Jane was here."
According to the Counter Extremism Project, Jane's Revenge is a militant pro-abortion rights group emerged after the U.S. Supreme Court leak of the draft of overturning Roe V. Wade. Since then, the group has claimed responsibility for numerous acts of vandalisms and fire bombings of pro-life offices and clinics. The name "Jane's Revenge" comes from a once underground organization named Jane's collective who before 1973 (when abortions became a right) would aid women in obtaining abortions.
The firebombing on Jun 7. was the second firebombing of the same campus and would be the most brutal of the firebombing attacks. Two firefighters were injured trying to extinguish the flames. In fact, the entire facility had to be rebuilt. Jane's Revenge took responsibility of the attack.
Photo Courtesy: Mark Mulville/The Buffalo News via AP
More about Jane's Revenge
Jane's revenge is a militant group hellbent on making abortion a right for women in the U.S. The group has no known leadership or hierarchy. The group posts their news, and call to actions on various pro-anarchist sites. Often calling for violence, anger, day of rages, and even stating "we need them to be afraid of us." It is important to note that in it's latest posting of a call to action, the group reveals "We cannot sustain this movement any longer with the same few hundred people who have been beaten down over and over again."
Since the reversal of Roe V. Wade, there has been over 100 attacks against pro-life centers and churches. Mostly attacked at night, pro-life centers have been firebombed, vandalized, and graffitied. Often a message will be given by Jane's Revenge threatening the center to be shut down, or suffer further consequences.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple
- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
The FBI and pro-life centers
Following the Supreme Court's decision, a whistleblower told the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. that the FBI 'shifted' their focus. The whistleblower, former Special Agent Garret O'Boyle, specified that the FBI created the threat tag "THREATSTOSCOTUS2022, which became aimed at monitoring "pro-life adherence." According to O'Boyle, the FBI wanted to look into pregnancy centers.
In response to the whistleblower's claims, the FBI issued this statement: "A tag is merely a statistical tool for tracking information for review and reporting,” the FBI went on. “The creation of a threat tag does not in any way change long-standing requirements to initiate an investigation, nor does it represent a change in the way the FBI prioritizes threats.”
The FBI continued " Any assertion that the FBI manipulates statistics on domestic terrorism cases is categorically false. The FBI’s authority to investigate a case as domestic terrorism requires the existence of a potential federal criminal violation and the unlawful use or threat of force or violence to further political or social objectives."
So what's the takeaways?
Between the two articles, it's easy to see that the work does not stop with the overturning of Roe V. Wade. In fact, the work has just begun. The law of the land, especially new laws, take time to become cultural and normalized. When asked what Christians can do, the Executive Director, Kristi Brown of Mountain Area Pregnancy Center (reference in the previous article), said this "Christians have to have a voice. They have to speak their voice. part of what got us in the position we were in, we were concerned about it but we really didn't say anything. In the polls we have to vote our conscience."
Bình luận