A ten-day boot camp goals to radicalize the following era of antiabortion extremists and practice them on the way to terrorize ladies searching for reproductive healthcare and their suppliers.
From June 15-25, the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust (SAH) hosted their twenty seventh annual antiabortion extremist coaching program. This 10-day lengthy program in Washington, D.C. was led by violent, extremist leaders intent on radicalizing younger adults into antiabortion activism and coaching them in harassment and intimidation schemes. Instantly after the boot camp, which focused highschool and faculty college students ages 14-25, SAH held a “DC Mission” that congregated much more antiabortion extremists within the nation’s capital.
SAH is an extremist group based in 1998 by Jeff White, a convicted felon, and Cheryl Conrad. The group was based after White was hit with an $880,000 high-quality for blockading clinics and stalking a doctor, forcing him to show over management of Operation Rescue West, one other antiabortion extremist group, to Troy Newman.
Audio system from numerous extremist teams, like Operation Save America (OSA) and Progressive Anti-Abortion Rebellion (PAAU), hailed from throughout the nation to advocate militant “activism.” Throughout the boot camp, speaker Maison Des Champs—often known as “Professional Life Spiderman”—posted to X, “As a lot as I wish to complain about being despatched to jail and fundraise off my experiences, it’s actually not that unhealthy. Jail is simply trip for adults. Nothing to be fearful of.”
Jason Storms, the nationwide director of OSA, was additionally a speaker at this 12 months’s boot camp. Storms is the son-in-law and protege of Matthew Trewhella, an antiabortion extremist who signed the defensive motion assertion—a 1993 proclamation that justifies the homicide of abortion suppliers.
Storms has mobilized extremist activists throughout the nation. In 2021, he led a gaggle of OSA activists to the Jan 6. demonstrations. Since then, Storms has educated militias throughout the U.S., intimidated sufferers exterior of girls’s reproductive well being clinics, and advocated the dying penalty for girls who obtain abortions.
Aaron Jonathon (AJ) Hurley, charged with felony stalking of a doctor, additionally spoke on the boot camp. Hurley is the director of activism for White Rose Resistance, an antiabortion extremist group, and former outreach director of SAH. In Might 2022, Hurley was charged with one felony depend of stalking, in addition to a number of misdemeanor counts for vandalism and obstructing freedom of entry to a clinic, after he and different SAH-affiliated extremists invaded Zuckerberg San Francisco Basic Hospital and Trauma Heart and intimidated a physician who performs abortions. Hurley and different extremists went as far as to focus on the physician’s residence and neighborhood, placing indicators up within the space calling her a “killer.”
On June 21, the bootcamp-trained youth—together with different extremists—made their technique to the Washington-Surgi Clinic, a reproductive care facility, and harassed Dr. Cesare Santangelo, following him with a digicam from his automotive to the entrance door of the clinic, calling him a “assassin” and demanding that he “repent.” A consumer on Instagram advocated for a extra violent strategy, writing, “Anybody really suppose the Founders of our nation would have simply stood with PROTEST SIGNS???”
This isn’t the primary time the D.C. clinic has been focused by antiabortion extremists. In October 2020, a gaggle of antiabortion extremists, together with Lauren Helpful (SAH veteran and co-founder of PAAU), compelled their method into the Washington Surgi-Clinic.
From Ms. journal’s in-depth examination of the invasion:
“About half a dozen anti-abortion extremists poured into the ready room. One, a person in his mid-40s named Jay Smith, pushed the nurse, inflicting her to sprain her ankle. Two others—Bell and Paulette Harlow, each of their 70s—had been carrying bike locks round their necks. They began shifting ready room chairs in entrance of the door resulting in the clinic’s medical process space. One other carried in a big duffel bag. Jean Marshall, additionally in her mid-70s, took chains that had been within the duffel and commenced utilizing them to safe Bell, Harlow and John Hinshaw, in his 60s, collectively in entrance of the door to the medical space.”
In 2022, the U.S. Division of Justice indicted 9 of the extremists on two counts: violating the Freedom of Entry to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and felony ‘conspiracy in opposition to [civil] rights.” In 2023, eight of the defendants had been convicted on each accounts. Simply final month, Lauren Helpful was sentenced to almost 5 years in jail for masterminding the invasion.
SAH differs from different group in that it makes a speciality of radicalizing younger adults and coaching them with convicted felons, people standing trial for intimidation, and different violent extremists.
To conclude this 12 months’s boot camp, the “campers” led a counter-protest during which they intimidated pro-choice advocates with medically inaccurate imagery and anti-Roe chants. An Instagram publish highlighted that one member of the counter-protest was simply 11 years outdated.
The younger adults at this 12 months’s boot camp weren’t educated to easily search abortion bans on the state stage. Throughout the boot camp, SAH member Jocabed Torres Bernal was interviewed by NBC Information to advocate for a whole and federal ban on abortion. SAH vehemently opposes any exceptions to abortion bans for rape, incest and the lifetime of the mom.
As antiabortion extremists practice youth in harassment ways, it’s extra essential than ever that the following era arise for girls’s reproductive rights.
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