Anti-abortion violence


Anti-abortion violence is violence committed against individuals and organizations that perform abortions or provide abortion counseling. Incidents of violence have included destruction of property, including vandalism; crimes against people, including kidnapping, stalking, assault, attempted murder, and murder; and crimes affecting both people and property, as well as arson and terrorism, such as bombings.
Anti-abortion extremists are considered a current domestic terrorist threat by the United States Department of Justice. Most documented incidents have occurred in the United States, though they have also occurred in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. G. Davidson Smith of Canadian Security Intelligence Service defined anti-abortion violence as single-issue terrorism. A study of 198287 violence considered the incidents "limited political" or "sub-revolutionary" terrorism.

Background

Anti-abortion violence is specifically directed towards people who or places which provide abortion. It is recognized as "single-issue terrorism". Incidents include vandalism, arson, and bombings of abortion clinics, such as those committed by Eric Rudolph, and murders or attempted murders of physicians and clinic staff, as committed by James Kopp, Paul Jennings Hill, Scott Roeder, Michael F. Griffin, and Peter James Knight.
Those who engage in or support such actions defend the use of force with claims of justifiable homicide or defense of others in the interest of protecting the life of the fetus. David C. Nice, of the University of Georgia, describes support for anti-abortion violence as being associated with weaker social controls, higher abortion rates, and greater acceptance of violence toward women. Numerous organizations have also recognized anti-abortion extremism as a form of Christian terrorism. Some adherents of the movement also follow the Anti-LGBTQ and conservatism movements.
Since the 1970s in the United States, there have been at least 11 murders, 42 bombings, 200 arsons, and 531 assaults against abortion providers and patients. At least one murder occurred in Australia, as well as several attempted murders in Canada. There were 1,793 abortion providers in the United States in 2008, as well as 197 abortion providers in Canada in 2001. The National Abortion Federation reported between 1,356 and 13,415 incidents of picketing at United States providers each year from 1995 to 2014.
The Federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act was passed in 1994 to protect reproductive health service facilities and their staff and patients from violent threats, assault, vandalism, and blockade. The law also provides the same level of legal protection to all pregnancy-related medical clinics, including anti-abortion counseling centers; it also applies to use of threatening tactics directed towards churches and places of worship. State, provincial, and local governments have also passed similar laws designed to afford legal protection of access to abortion in the United States and Canada.

By country

Australia

  • July 16, 2001: Peter James Knight attacked a clinic in Melbourne, Australia, shooting and killing the security guard, Steven Rogers. Knight brought ropes and gags into the clinic along with 16 litres of kerosene, intending to burn all 15 staff and 26 patients to death. Knight was charged and was sentenced to life in prison on November 19, 2002.
  • January 6, 2009: A firebombing using Molotov cocktails was attempted at a medical clinic in Mosman Park, Western Australia. Damage was minimal and only resulted in smashed windows and blackened external walls. Police believed graffiti saying "baby killers" on the building was related to the attack, however, the medical clinic did not actually offer abortion services.

    Canada

Attempted murder

Violence has also occurred in Canada, where at least three doctors have been attacked to date. The physicians were part of a pattern of attacks, which targeted providers in Canada and upstate New York. All victims were shot, or shot at, in their homes with a rifle, at dusk or in the morning, in late October or early November over a multi-year period. There is speculation that the timing of the shootings is related to the Canadian observance of Remembrance Day.
A joint Canadian-FBI task force investigating the shootings was formed in December 1997—three years after the first attack. An official of the Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Police complained that the Canadian Government was not adequately financing the investigation. He said he requested more funds in July that would raise its budget to $250,000. Federal officials rejected the request on October 15, a week before Slepian was killed.
In 2001, James Kopp, an American citizen and resident was charged with the murder of Slepian and the attempted murder of Short; some speculate that Kopp was responsible for the other shootings.
  • November 8, 1994: In 1994, a sniper fired two bullets into the home of Garson Romalis, a gynaecologist of Vancouver, British Columbia who was eating breakfast. One hit his thigh, destroyed some of his muscles, broke his femur and damaged his femoral artery. Romalis saved his own life by using his bathrobe belt as a tourniquet. Romalis had become more outspoken about abortion rights since he was shot, citing the harm done to women by illegal abortion and the thousands of cases of septic abortion that came to his hospital in residency.
  • November 10, 1995: Hugh Short of Ancaster, Ontario was shot. A sniper's bullet fired into his home shattered his elbow and ended his surgical career. Short was not a high-profile target: it was not widely known that he did abortions.
  • November 11, 1997: Jack Fainman, a physician of Winnipeg, Manitoba, was shot. A gunman fired through the back window of Fainman's riverbank home in Winnipeg about 9 pm and struck him in the right shoulder, inches from his heart. The police would not comment on whether Fainman, who has declined interview requests since the attack, is still performing abortions.
  • July 11, 2000: Garson Romalis was stabbed by an unidentified assailant in the lobby of his clinic.

    Bombing and property damage

  • February 25, 1990: Two men broke into a clinic in Vancouver and destroyed C$30,000 worth of medical equipment with crowbars.
  • May 18, 1992: A Toronto clinic operated by Henry Morgentaler was firebombed, causing the entire front wall of the building to collapse. The Morgentaler Clinic on Harbord Street in Toronto was firebombed during the night by two people using gasoline and a firework to set off the explosion. The next day, clinic management announced that the firebombing failed to prevent any abortions, since all scheduled abortions were carried out in alternative locations. A portion of the Toronto Women's Bookstore, next door, was damaged. No one was hurt but the building had to be demolished. As a result of the arson, the Ontario government decided to spend $420,000 on improved security for abortion clinics. At the time, all four free-standing clinics in Ontario were in Toronto. The government wanted to gather information about activities by anti-abortion sympathizers; at the time, law enforcement agencies in Canada did not collect statistics about harassment and violence against abortion providers, their clinics, or their clients. Six months after the attack, the Toronto Police Force still had not made any progress in uncovering the attackers, any leads on suspects lead to dead-ends.

    New Zealand

  • 1976: An arson attack was carried out at the Auckland Medical Aid Centre, which was estimated to cause $100,000 in damages to the facility. The Auckland office of the Sisters Overseas Service organisation was targeted that same evening.
  • Circa 1999: In the late 1990s, Graeme White was found guilty and sent to prison for tunneling into an abortion clinic with what the police described as "incendiary devices".

    United States

Murders

In the United States, violence directed towards abortion providers has killed at least eleven people, including four doctors, two clinic employees, a security guard, a police officer, two people, and a clinic escort. Seven murders occurred in the 1990s.
  • March 10, 1993: Gynaecologist David Gunn of Pensacola, Florida was fatally shot during a protest. He had been the subject of wanted-style posters distributed by Operation Rescue in the summer of 1992. Michael F. Griffin was found guilty of Gunn's murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
  • July 29, 1994: John Britton, a physician, and James Barrett, a clinic escort, were both shot to death outside another facility, the Ladies Center, in Pensacola. Paul Jennings Hill was charged with the killings. Hill received a death sentence and was executed on September 3, 2003. The clinic in Pensacola had been bombed before in 1984 and was also bombed subsequently in 2012.
  • December 30, 1994: Two receptionists, Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols, were killed in two clinic attacks in Brookline, Massachusetts. John Salvi was arrested and confessed to the killings. He was found guilty of two counts of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Salvi died in prison on November 29, 1996, and guards found his body under his bed with a plastic garbage bag tied around his head. His death was ruled a suicide. Salvi had also confessed to a non-lethal attack in Norfolk, Virginia days before the Brookline killings.
  • January 29, 1998: Robert Sanderson, an off-duty police officer who worked as a security guard at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, was killed when his workplace was bombed. Eric Rudolph admitted responsibility; he was also charged with three Atlanta bombings: the 1997 bombing of an abortion center, the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing, and another of a lesbian nightclub. He was found guilty of the crimes and received two life sentences as a result.
  • October 23, 1998: Barnett Slepian, an obstetrician who provided abortion services in the Buffalo area, was shot to death with a high-powered rifle at his home in Amherst, New York by a sniper who hid in the woods behind Dr. Slepian's home and shot him through his kitchen window right in front of his family, shortly after they had returned home for a memorial service for Dr. Slepian's father. His was the last in a series of similar shootings against providers in Canada and northern New York state which were all likely committed by James Kopp. Kopp was convicted of Slepian's murder after being apprehended in France in 2001, and was given a life sentence in prison.
  • May 31, 2009: George Tiller was shot and killed by Scott Roeder as Tiller served as an usher at a church in Wichita, Kansas. This was not Tiller's first time being a victim to anti-abortion violence. Tiller was shot once before in 1993 by Shelley Shannon, who was sentenced 10 years in prison for the shooting. Roeder was given a life sentence in prison, with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
  • November 27, 2015: A shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, left three dead and several injured, and a suspect Robert L. Dear was apprehended. The suspect had previously acted against other clinics, and referred to himself as a "warrior for the babies" at his hearing. Neighbors and former neighbors described the suspect as "reclusive", and police from several states where the suspect resided described a history of run-ins dating from at least 1997. As of December 2015, the trial of the suspect was open; but, on May 11, 2016, the court declared the suspect incompetent to stand trial after a mental evaluation was completed. Dear was indefinitely confined at a Colorado state mental hospital beginning in 2016, while his case remained on hold. Dear died in custody on November 22, 2025, almost 10 years after the shooting.
  • June 14, 2025: Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated in their home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota by a man impersonating a police officer. The same man had earlier shot Minnesota state senator John Hoffman and his wife, who survived. The suspect, 57-year old Vance Luther Boelter, was an evangelical Christian businessman who was a member of the anti-abortion movement. Police found writings in the suspect's car that included a list of nearly 70 names, mostly Democrat politicians or figures with ties to groups that either advocate for abortion rights or provide abortion services.