The National Abortion Federation, which has tracked violence against abortion providers since 1977, said Tuesday that the level of violence abortion providers currently face is "beyond anything we've ever seen before."
The group's interim president and chief executive officer, The Very Reverend Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, told CBS in an exclusive interview Tuesday: "We're seeing a dramatic increase in violence and disruption against clinics."
2017 saw almost twice as many violent acts against abortion providers than the year before with 1,081 acts recorded by the NAF. In 2018, the NAF recorded 1,369 violent acts, which include 15 instances of assault and battery, 14 counts of stalking, 13 burglaries, and more than one thousand instances of illegal trespassing.
Three men were arrested last August after threatening mass shootings at Planned Parenthood facilities. Law enforcement seized more than a dozen rifles, almost a dozen pistols and 10,000 rounds of ammunition during a raid on the Ohio home of one of the suspects.
Julie Burkhart, founder and CEO of the abortion clinic network Trust Women, told CBS the current climate reminds her of 2009, the year her boss and mentor, Dr. George Tiller, was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist while at church.
"I'm just so unsettled and fearful that we're going to see people hurt," she said. "My boss was murdered. I fear that we're going to have the same horrible outcome."
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