“That’s on that bodycam already. I’m already in trouble.”
The founder of that Wyoming clinic, Julie Burkhart, told VICE News that she’s particularly afraid for clinics in liberal areas. “They're going to be targets because that's where everybody's going to have to go and gather,” she said.In May, the Department of Homeland Security started to prepare for the possibility that extremist violence, on both sides of the abortion wars, could spike after Roe falls. Authorities in several states have, in recent weeks, investigated vandalism and fires at several crisis pregnancy centers, anti-abortion facilities that aim to convince people not to get abortions.The cops’ handling of this situation in Washington raised a troubling, and increasingly urgent, question: With abortion clinics and providers under threat, can they trust that the police will keep them safe?
“Amazing that the police are willing to engage at this level, because the more that they talk, the better opportunity that we have to see women and children rescued,” one protester told the camera. “And that’s what obstructing the door of an abortion clinic is about and can be so successful.”Eventually, the cops handcuffed the protesters and the visuals cut out. But the audio continued, and someone who seems to be an officer could be heard telling a protester, “I agree with where you guys stand.”At one point, this individual seemed to give advice on how to avoid getting arrested. “They were hellbent on you being arrested, right?” he said. “In hindsight, if you guys would have walked up to the sidewalk to do your protesting, no one would be arrested right now and the message would be even louder to them. Do you understand what I’m saying?”At another, he seemed to reference the Black Lives Matter protests that had sparked in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. “My biggest issue with it is, you’re allowing these people to protest and burn cities to the ground and nobody cares,” the cop said. “And now they’re so upset when someone comes and protests at the clinic.”The Sterling Heights Police Department didn’t respond to a VICE News request for comment.“We balance a fine line between not panicking and not frightening patients and staff and ourselves—myself included—and being realistic about what we can protect ourselves from.”
After Louisville, Kentucky, police killed Breonna Taylor and a Minneapolis police officer murdered Floyd, just a few hours away from Duluth, the clinic escorts at the WE Health Clinic had had enough. They decided: We will only call the police if it’s an emergency.“We document and try to follow up with reproductive-justice attorneys. We’re still trying to figure out what to do when laws are violated, but [we’re] not calling law enforcement unless there’s some kind of injury or a sign of a weapon or things like that,” said Thompson, who estimated in April that the escorts hadn’t called the cops in a year.“They just don’t do anything. They’ll just say, ‘OK, we’ll try and go and talk to them,’ and they act like it’s this game that everybody’s playing.”
Last year, Spokane police investigated a woman who miscarried because they believed that she could be guilty of criminal mistreatment of a child if she didn’t call 911 in time to save the fetus, the Spokesman-Review reported.They will be tasked with making sure that abortions don’t happen—and, potentially, criminalizing not only those who perform them, but people who get them. Calling in the cops could then become even riskier, particularly for patients of color.
Asked to name a time when the Louisville Metro Police Department protected the clinic, Marshall had a one-word answer: “Never.”
In the days since Roe’s overturning, anger has swelled against the Biden administration and other Democrats, who have campaigned for decades on abortion-rights policies yet failed, repeatedly, to codify Roe’s protections into law before it was too late. In a speech after Roe’s overturning, President Joe Biden stressed that his administration would try to protect abortion-inducing pills—which would be illegal under state abortion bans anyway—and defend pregnant people’s right to “remain free to travel safely to another state to seek the care they need.”He didn’t mention one tool that the feds can already use when clinic protests can get out of hand: the FACE Act. As anti-abortion demonstrations raged in 1994, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, more commonly known as the FACE Act. If a protester blockaded, vandalized, or used their body to stop a patient from getting an abortion, among other offenses, they could suddenly face severe federal penalties. But the FACE Act can’t stop all harassment, especially when it doesn’t get enforced. Fowler, the National Abortion Federation spokesperson, said that her organization would like to see federal authorities follow through on more potential FACE cases. “It’s a very small number that actually get prosecuted,” she said. “FACE encompasses any type of obstruction outside a clinic, so on most days people are violating FACE, maybe just for a few minutes—but they are. But they don’t all get investigated or prosecuted.”The Justice Department didn’t respond to questions from VICE News about future enforcement of the FACE Act. Over the spring, Calla Hales’ clinic in Charlotte, North Carolina, regularly saw upwards of a hundred protesters each weekend. She had two bomb threats in 2021; she told VICE News in April, “We haven’t had any resolution on that.” But she can’t really dwell on that, or about how local cops will behave now that Roe is gone, or about anything other than just trying to keep her clinics open and her patients safe.“I think a lot of providers at this point are literally in survival mode,” Hales said, “and we are just doing the best we can to keep going and knowing that shit’s about to get real.”“I think a lot of providers at this point are literally in survival mode,” Hales said, “and we are just doing the best we can to keep going and knowing that shit’s about to get real.”