FBI offers reward for info on attacks against reproductive clinics

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has said that a series of attacks on at least 10 reproductive health care facilities around the country last year may have been acts of domestic terrorism, and it has offered a reward of up to $25,000 for information.

According to the Justice Department, clinics that provide abortion care appear to have been set on fire, and some buildings have also been vandalized. In 2022, suspects wrote “If abortions aren't safe neither are you” on the Life Choices building, an anti-abortion organization in Colorado, according to ABC News. 

In addition to Washington, California, North Carolina, Wisconsin, New York, Tennessee and Colorado, three of the attacks targeted locations in Oregon. Despite the fact that there were several acts of vandalism throughout the year, five of them occurred in close succession to the Supreme Court's June 24, 2022 decision to put an end to abortion rights across the country, Forbes reported. 

The FBI said that it will pay sources in exchange for “information leading to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the suspect(s) responsible for these crimes,” according to Fox News. 

According to a statement from FBI Director Christopher Wray, the FBI's statement reflected commitment to pursue investigations into crimes against pregnancy resource centers. Only a few days prior to the FBI's announcement, a pregnancy center made the announcement that it would be hiring private detectives in response to the bureau's lack of action, Fox News reported. 

The recent arson attack at a Planned Parenthood clinic in central Illinois was not reported to have caused any injuries. Authorities in Peoria, Illinois, claimed someone tossed a Molotov cocktail into a Planned Parenthood building, motivating the FBI’s announcement of the prize, according to Forbes. 

It is worth mentioning that abortion is one of the most controversial topics in the United States. In the nearly seven months since the Supreme Court's decision, 13 states have virtually outlawed abortion, while several others have enacted strict regulations on the operation, and some states have even attempted to outlaw it but were thwarted by local courts. The abortion debate has become more violent in recent years, according to data from the pro-abortion rights National Abortion Federation, though statistics for 2022 are not yet available. According to the organization, attacks on abortion clinic employees and clients surged by 128% between 2020 and 2021, while burglaries, vandalism, and bomb threats also significantly increased.