Over the past forty-five years, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) has documented more than one million acts of anti-abortion violence, harassment, and disruption, including 11 murders, 26 attempted murders, 42 bombings, 196 arsons, 491 incidents of assault and battery, and 1,064 blockades.
Now, anti-abortion extremism is getting worse — and extremists are targeting Pennsylvania clinics.
Earlier this year, a defendant was indicted for a FACE Act violation after he allegedly assaulted a clinic escort in Philadelphia “twice on the same date, with one assault resulting in bodily injury.”
An extremist group that invades and terrorizes clinics in order to obstruct patients from obtaining abortion care recently invaded two Pennsylvania clinics.
During one invasion, a member of the group barricaded himself inside the clinic’s bathroom, forcing clinic staff to call the police, evacuate the building, and cancel all appointments for the day — effectively terrorizing staff and patients and achieving a complete disruption in patient care.
One way to protect innocent people from anti-abortion violence and extremism is statutory buffer zones.
Buffer zones are small, fixed areas around a facility’s entrance intended as a safety zone. Protesters can and do still shout insults at staff, escorts, and patients from behind the buffer zone lines; they simply can’t physically approach anyone within the buffer zone. As such, buffer zones reduce the risk of violent encounters and help ensure that staff can safely provide and patients can safely access necessary health care.
Keeping providers and patients safe is why WLP legal interns Hannah Brem and Namita Dwarakanath and I wanted to help defend Harrisburg’s buffer zone — especially after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the right to abortion under the U.S. Constitution in June, and protecting access to abortion care in Pennsylvania took on a new urgency.
We wrote an amicus curiae brief that was filed last week with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on behalf of Physicians for Reproductive Health and Pittsburgh Pro-Choice Escorts in Reilly v. City of Harrisburg, a case that will inform the future of the City of Harrisburg’s 20-foot statutory buffer zone.
Anti-abortion activists have been unsuccessfully trying to eliminate Harrisburg’s buffer zone through the Reilly litigation for the last six years.
During an earlier stage of litigation, WLP filed an amicus brief that highlighted the long history of violence targeted at reproductive health care facilities. In the new brief, Hannah, Namita, and I emphasized the alarming increase in anti-abortion violence in recent years, the detrimental impacts of physically aggressive protest activity on patient health and safety, and the importance of Harrisburg’s buffer zone for protecting access to reproductive health care.
There are just two clinics in all of central Pennsylvania that provide abortion care. One of these clinics is in Harrisburg. Since Dobbs, clinics across the state have been caring for an influx of patients from states that have severely restricted abortion access, making this buffer zone even more critical to ensuring patients — Pennsylvania residents and nonresidents alike — can safely access abortion and related reproductive health care in central Pennsylvania.
Thank you for your support. We couldn’t do this work without you.
Sincerely,
Maggie, Staff Attorney
Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing and defending the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and beyond. We are a non-profit organization!
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