Anti-Abortion Protests at Pharmacies Throughout U.S. Concentrate on CVS, Walgreens, RiteAid

Radical anti-abortion activists are using to the streets Saturday in a countrywide working day of protest in opposition to the availability of abortion treatment at pharmacies across the place.

The protests had been co-ordinated by Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), a direct motion team that describes alone as comprising nonviolent feminists committed to dismantling the “abortion industrial elaborate.” They are calling for anti-abortion supporters to boycott Walgreens, CVS and RiteAid in buy to reduce funds flowing to “Big Abortion.”

“Feb. 4 is just the starting. There will be extra protests and steps to arrive except CVS and Walgreens make your mind up to enrich communities relatively than guidance the murder of young children to line their pockets,” PAAU spokesperson Caroline Smith claimed in a statement to The Day-to-day Beast. “Their vision to flip pharmacies into abortion businesses which will exploit and kill disproportionately low-cash flow persons and persons of color for profit, will be satisfied with nonviolent resistance at every single change.”

PAAU mentioned they experienced protests prepared at 94 pharmacies, with all over 400 folks signed up to show up at through their web page, and expectations of hundreds more turning out. The team explained they envisioned counter-protesters in more substantial metropolitan areas the place steps had been remaining held, like San Francisco, Boston, New York Metropolis and Washington D.C.

Abortion legal rights teams have condemned the group’s steps, although some reproductive rights activists have dismissed them as preposterous.

“Anti-abortion people and groups are performing every little thing in their electricity to protect against individuals from being in a position to entry any abortion care nationwide and are endorsing an agenda that is not supported by the majority of individuals in this country,” Melissa Fowler, main application officer at the National Abortion Federation, told The Everyday Beast by e-mail. “Pharmacies that are increasing entry to medication abortion are just the hottest target of the nicely-coordinated, violent anti-abortion motion.”

“If they wanna embarrass on their own by whining about the ‘abortion-industrial complex’ outside a random pharmacy which is just funny,” the team NYC for Abortion Rights wrote on Instagram. “New Yorkers will be out to view the clown present.”

Very last thirty day period, the Food stuff and Drug Administration calm its regulations, making it possible for pharmacies to dispense mifepristone, the first of two supplements expected for a treatment abortion. Pharmacy giants CVS and Walgreens straight away announced they would search for certification to market the medication. (Patients continue to require a prescription from a wellness-care company to access the drug.)

Since the tumble of Roe, some Republicans and anti-abortion activists have set their sights on eradicating entry to abortion medication. At least 18 states have legislation prohibiting the use of telemedicine, instead demanding a affected individual to be in the physical presence of a clinician to acquire a prescription.

On Wednesday, Lawyers Common in 20 states signed a letter to CVS and Walgreens, warning that red states might choose authorized motion if the pharmacies mail the treatment by mail. The letter railed in opposition to the Biden administration’s Business office of Authorized Counsel, which not long ago suggested USPS personnel could not be held criminally liable for offering mailed abortion treatment, regardless of a particular state’s legal guidelines.

Above the previous number of yrs, PAAU activists have manufactured headlines for their bizarre and grisly antics, some of which have resulted in arrests and jail time.

In October 2020, Lauren Handy, a Catholic anti-abortion zealot and PAAU’s director of activism, was among the 10 people today who allegedly blockaded and invaded the Washington Surgi-Clinic, a facility providing abortions in Foggy Bottom. Helpful pretended to be a affected individual seeking care, in accordance to a federal indictment, and the relaxation of the team utilised furniture, chains, ropes and their bodies to block entry to the clinic’s doors, though stay-streaming the protest on Facebook.

SARAH SILBIGER

The group, which provided other PAAU activists, had been federally indicted for violations of the Encounter Act, which protects accessibility to abortion clinics, in May possibly 2022. Useful, who has faced very similar rates in other states, was described by the feds as the ring-chief of the “conspirators.” She has pleaded not guilty, but the scenario is ongoing. Handy faces up to 10 many years in jail.

Handy defended her actions in an interview with Catholic information outlet The Pillar in April 2022.

“If abortion is murder, then our steps want to be reflective of that,” she said, “When man’s regulations counter God’s law, we are underneath no ethical or ethical obligation to accept these guidelines.”

In November, 2021, Handy, alongside with 6 other PAAU activists, together with the group’s govt director Terrisa Bukovinac, invaded the Alexandria Women’s Health and fitness Clinic in Alexandria, Virginia. Handy was later sentenced to 30 days in jail for trespassing, though other activists, together with PAAU’s director of communications Kristin Turner, served shorter sentences.

EVELYN HOCKSTEIN

In a specially ugly incident, police taken out 5 fetuses from Handy’s Washington D.C. condominium in March 2022. Handy claimed that she and Bukovinac experienced been given a whole of 115 fetal remains by the driver of a Curtis Bay Clinical Waste Products and services truck outside the house Washington Surgi-Clinic. The waste organization vigorously denied their tale.

“At no time did the Curtis Bay staff hand in excess of any of these offers to the PAAU or other 3rd celebration, and any allegations made in any other case are false,” the firm claimed.

Useful held a push convention, in which she claimed to have experienced a Catholic priest bless and bury 110 of the smaller fetuses, which she claimed appeared to have been aborted early in being pregnant. PAAU claimed the 5 fetuses Useful held on to ended up illegal late-expression abortions. Even so, Metropolitan Law enforcement Section government assistant main Ashan Benedict explained the fetuses experienced been aborted in accordance with D.C. legal guidelines.

“There doesn’t look to be something legal in mother nature about that,” Benedict explained, “except for how they got into this property.”

PAAU have gravitated in direction of the types of serious tactics utilized by past anti-abortion militants, these types of as groups like Procedure Rescue, started in 1986 by Randal Terry.

Activists with Operation Rescue blockaded abortion clinics and harassed clinical providers. When an abortion service provider, Dr George Tiller, was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist in 2009, Terry defended the killing, indicating, “George Tiller was a mass-assassin.” Terry, who ran Operation Rescue until eventually 1991, is now a member of PAAU.

“Ironically, contacting on your own ‘Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising’ seems anathema to staying progressive, if you’re determining that you are going to be fully commited to ensuring that system autonomy is not going to be available,” states Lizz Winstead, a comedian and founder of the abortion legal rights group Abortion Access Entrance.

Winstead, who co-established The Everyday Demonstrate ahead of concentrating on reproductive rights, claims that PAAU’s actions are hypocritical and unsafe. She details out that they’ve shared a platform with Senator Ted Cruz, who Winstead says “has actively fought to destroy courses for small children and families.”

“Their latest lie is that folks are dying from abortion medicine. It’s merely not real,” Winstead suggests. “That only does hurt to individuals in search of the care, and people today giving the care.”

Medicine abortion now accounts for close to half of all abortions carried out in the United States, according to info collected by the Guttmacher Institute. The scientific consensus, dependent on research conducted in excess of the past 20 yrs, is that abortion medicine is protected and effective for ending early pregnancy. The identical drugs used for medication abortion, such as mifepristone, are also employed to deal with miscarriage.

Tensions have been large among anti-abortion activist teams and reproductive rights advocates since the tumble of Roe.

Violence versus abortion clinic escorts and attacks on clinics are on the rise, reporting by The Day by day Beast has identified. Very last week, an Illinois male was charged soon after allegedly setting fire to a Prepared Parenthood center in Peoria on Jan. 15. Tyler W. Massengill, 32, told investigators his previous girlfriend experienced an abortion at the clinic and that if his steps brought about “a little delay” in the clinic’s capacity to operate and serve individuals, then it would have been “all value it,” according to the Peoria Journal Star.

Previous month, the FBI made available a $25,000 reward for information and facts about three arson assaults from anti-abortion groups and centers in Oregon.

Despite the uptick in violence, Winstead says anti-abortion activists won’t discourage reproductive legal rights organizers. Today’s protests, she claims, are an try to distract from the major lawful rates some activists at PAAU are experiencing.

“[PAAU] are trying to assert themselves as a smokescreen for the issues they are about to get in,” Winstead states. “We are not worried of them.”