Anti-abortion harassment and violence against providers, clients, and patients are unfortunately commonplace. Following the release of a draft opinion from the Supreme Court that indicates the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade is imminent, right-wing media have remained willfully obtuse about the long history of anti-abortion murders and attacks (that they, in part, contributed to) in order to substitute their own narrative about supposed violence on the left.
Since Politico published the leaked draft opinion on May 2, right-wing media’s strategy has involved ignoring both the realities of what a post-Roe world would mean and the utter unpopularity of the Supreme Court’s potential decision. Instead, right-wing media have claimed that the real story is that the draft opinion leaked from the Supreme Court -- describing the leak as worse than terrorism or the insurrection on January 6. Not content with just one ridiculous distraction from reality, right-wing media are also ignoring decades of anti-abortion violence to fearmonger about supposed violence from the left.
In the days following the publication of the draft decision, right-wing media have slammed protests in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., with one Townhall headline proclaiming:
Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade summed up abortion protests across the country as, “This is the left's warning: ‘Do what we say, or we will burn your country down.’ It's not an exaggeration. Many of them have taken to social media to threaten exactly that.”
Former Fox host and current radio host Todd Starnes tweeted:
The right-wing website PJMedia passed off as true its speculation that Justice Samuel Alito, the writer of the draft opinion, pulled out of an upcoming public appearance due to threats.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board went further, writing, “We hate to say this, but some abortion fanatic could decide to commit an act of violence to stop a 5-4 ruling. It’s an awful thought, but we live in fanatical times.”
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro tweeted:
In 1993, an anti-abortion extremist assassinated Dr. David Gunn outside his clinic in the first known murder of an abortion doctor in the United States. Since then, anti-abortion sentiment has contributed to 10 other deaths, as well as numerous injuries to providers, patients, and their families.
In 2009, anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder murdered abortion provider Dr. George Tiller while Tiller was attending church. Before Tiller's assassination, then-Fox host Bill O’Reilly had openly bullied Tiller on his program. According to Rolling Stone, “O’Reilly had waged an unflagging war against Tiller that did just about everything short of urging his followers to murder him.” After Tiller’s assassination, O’Reilly claimed he only “reported accurately” on Tiller. (O’Reilly was later ousted from Fox due to reports of sexual harassment.)
In 2015, Robert Dear opened fire in a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, killing three and injuring at least nine more. After the attack, Dear reportedly said the phrase “no more baby parts” as an explanation, likely referring to an oft-repeated right-wing media talking point based on discredited undercover videos from the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress.
The most recent data from the National Abortion Federation on anti-abortion violence in 2020 shows (emphasis in original):
Make no mistake -- protests on the left will continue if the Supreme Court’s draft opinion becomes reality, and those protests are unlikely to be peaceful 100% of the time. However, right-wing media’s promotion of violence on the left as the boogeyman in this fight willfully ignores both decades of anti-abortion violence and their own role in contributing to it.
