Without abortion clinics to protest in states that have outlawed the procedure, anti-abortion activists have flocked to those where it is protected. The movement has long coordinated protests, encouraging people to target specific clinics and arranging busing to get them there. Protesters often travel long distances to harass clinic workers and patients. A federal indictment related to a 2021 clinic blockade, for example, noted that five of the seven people facing conspiracy charges for obstructing access to a Tennessee clinic came from out of state.

After Dobbs, Fowler said, “people are picking up and moving to other places to really be able to target providers every day.” Providers in protective states who had few protesters before the decision have noted an uptick in their numbers, she said.[3] Across the country, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) Project, abortion-related protests rose dramatically in 2021 and 2022 and, between 2020 and 2021, armed abortion-related demonstrations also increased. “Armed abortion-related demonstrations have turned violent or destructive 40% of the time, while unarmed abortion-related events have turned violent 0.2% of the time,” ACLED reports.

Many anti-abortion demonstrations are coordinated by large, nationwide organizations like Students for Life of America, the nation’s largest anti-abortion student group, and 40 Days for Life, which is best known for organizing mass anti-abortion events annually during Lent. The latter organization trains activists to host prayer vigils at their local clinics, both in the United States and more than 60 other countries around the world.

Anti-abortion protester Coleman Boyd argues with volunteer clinic escorts outside the Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Jackson, Mississippi, on May 20, 2021. (Credit: Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)

Smaller organizations around the country have adopted similar models, outsourcing protests to local activists. One such group is Love Life, a North Carolina-based organization that coordinates with churches to hold “prayer walks” to local abortion clinics on Saturdays. As a result, protests at clinics targeted by the group have grown dramatically, sometimes attracting hundreds of people.[4] While they are headquartered in North Carolina – which adopted a 12-week abortion ban after a long legal and legislative fight – Love Life is active in many states that protect abortion, including California, Washington and New York.

“They have really figured out the formula for intensifying harassment at clinics and bringing danger to activists who support abortion rights,” Kelsea McLain, who organizes a group of clinic escorts in North Carolina, where she lives, in addition to working at Alabama’s abortion advocacy group Yellowhammer Fund, told the SPLC. “Every bit of extremism and violence we’ve encountered over the last three years has been tied directly to Love Life.”

According to McLain, protesters film the license plates of people entering and exiting the clinic and have made intimidating comments to patients. “I see you drove in from Alabama, where abortion is illegal. You should be concerned about that,” she recalled a protester saying to a person entering the clinic, according to a separate interview with Prism.[5]

McLain has consistently faced harassment from anti-abortion protesters, both outside clinics and at her own home. In one incident, an anti-abortion activist told her during a clinic protest, “I’ve killed in defense of the innocent before, and I absolutely will do it again.” Her personal information, including her address, has been posted on a Facebook profile created seemingly specifically to harass abortion activists. People have driven by her house taking pictures, and anti-abortion activists have followed her as she left a clinic. She has, at times, pulled away from public-facing activism “just out of fear, basically.”[6]

Like McLain, abortion activists and providers face regular intimidation and threats, including online doxing and death threats. While abortion providers in the past were targeted by “wanted” posters that anti-abortion activists posted around their neighborhoods or mailed death threats, today the internet makes harassment even easier. When a doctor or abortion worker is featured in a news article, for example, Fowler said it is not unusual for them to receive “hundreds of emails and death threats and horrible things.”[7]

While states that ban abortion now see far fewer anti-abortion protests, advocates in those states – and especially those of color – remain targets for the anti-abortion movement. After Yellowhammer’s executive director, Jenice Fountain, appeared on MSNBC to discuss Alabama’s restrictive legal landscape after Dobbs, for example, a person attempted to kidnap one of her children. “They literally tried to pick up my youngest from school,” she told Tina Vásquez of Prism. “People have driven by my home and taken pictures of me. I did a risk assessment with a security team, and they said my current risk level is high,” in part because she was on the radar of a large white nationalist hate group.