Yesterday’s news from the Justice Department press release reported that three individuals from Florida have pleaded guilty to conspiring to harm employees of pregnancy resource centers in their right to provide and seek reproductive health services. These individuals targeted facilities that offered abortion alternatives and vandalized them with threatening messages.
Court documents reveal that between May and July 2022, Caleb Freestone, Amber Smith-Stewart, and Annarella Rivera carried out a series of deliberate attacks on pro-life pregnancy help centers in Florida. They confessed to vandalizing the centers at night while concealing their identities with masks and dark clothing. The messages they spray-painted included threats like “If abortions aren’t safe than niether [sic] are you,” “YOUR TIME IS UP!!,” “WE’RE COMING for U,” and “We are everywhere.”
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division condemned the defendants’ actions, stating, “These defendants vandalized pregnancy resource centers with threatening messages meant to terrify the employees of those centers. Violence and threats have no place in the national discourse about reproductive rights. The Justice Department is committed to holding accountable those who seek to interfere with access to reproductive health services in our country, without regard to the point of view of the defendants or their victims.”
U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg for the Middle District of Florida emphasized, “Federal law protects providers who render reproductive health care and those who seek their services. Neither should be subject to unlawful intimidation or threats of harm. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners in protecting access to reproductive health care and federally prosecuting those interfering with that right.”
The defendants were associated with a pro-choice extremist network called ‘Jane’s Revenge,’ and the attack occurred shortly after the leak of the Dobbs opinion.
