No, Pro-lifers Are the Real Bullies

Justice chastises pro-choice protesters, ignores history

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, discussing the court’s leaked draft opinion set to end federal abortion rights, said conservatives would not employ the bullying tactics of the left.

“You would never visit Supreme Court justices’ houses when things didn’t go our way,” he said during a May 13 judicial conference in Dallas. “We didn’t throw temper tantrums. It is incumbent on us to always act appropriately, and not to repay tit for tat.”

The longest-serving jurist on the court, Thomas supports overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, arguing that abortion rights is not enshrined in the Constitution. The court, he said, “can’t be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want.”

This ignores the violent, bullying nature of the anti-abortion movement in the decades since Roe was embraced by the majority. And it reinforces the overhype that groups, such as Ruth Sent Us, have crossed some ethical lines with their organized protests.

Balancing the right to peacefully protest on streets and sidewalks with a law against judicial intimidation is definitely a challenge for law enforcers. Some lawmakers have called for mass arrests.

But the “pro-life” movement’s success has been forged by violence, murder, intimidation, and arson. Currently, it has enough political and judicial clout to make such tactics unnecessary. But that doesn’t erase the realities that necessitated the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act to protect clinics, staff, and patients.

Since 1977, there have been 11 murders, 26 attempted murders, 42 bombings, 194 arsons, and thousands of incidents of criminal activities directed at abortion providers, according to a December report by The National Abortion Federation.

In the last decade, The Department of Justice has prosecuted more than a dozen cases of violence and other crimes directed at providers. While abortion opposition is often based on Christian values, some religious activism, such as the Army of God, morphed into terrorist organizations.

Some violence received national attention: bombings of clinics, such as those committed by Eric Rudolph (1996–98); and murders or attempted murders of doctors and clinic workers by James Kopp (1998), Paul Jennings Hill (1994), Scott Roeder (2009), Michael F. Griffin (1993), and Peter James Knight (2001).

Providers worry about a possible surge in violence after a final court ruling is expected in June. Even during the pandemic, threats, harassment, and assaults outside of clinics increased, the federation reports. A Dec. 31 fire at Planned Parenthood in Knoxville, Tenn., was ruled an arson. The clinic, which does not perform abortions, had also been shot at in January 2021.

None of this excuses abortion-rights supporters from embracing violence. After the leaked court opinion, a May 8 fire and attempted Molotov cocktail targeted a Madison, Wis., pregnancy counseling center run by an anti-abortion group. No one was hurt, but a message on the building included, “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either.”

Abortion providers, however, quickly denounced the attack. Overall, the country is fortunate that pro-choicers have really not engaged in the “tit for tat” that Thomas suggests.

During the judicial conference, Thomas’ primary concern was the leaked opinion’s impact on internal court relationships and public perceptions. He did not address his controversial refusals to recuse himself from cases about efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. White House texts reveal his wife, Ginni, was involved as an activist.

Yet Thomas told the conference: “I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them, and then I wonder when they’re gone or they are destabilized, what we’ll have as a country.”

The irony is that the lives of half the nation’s women, now living in the 26 states likely to ban abortion, will be destabilized by losing a 50-year constitutional right to control their own bodies.

Now that — rather than peaceful protests — is something judges and lawmakers should worry about.