Catholics under attack: Incidents since SCOTUS draft abortion decision, by state

Vandalism at St. John XXIII parish in Fort Collins, Colo., May 7, 2022. / Eileen Pulse

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 10, 2022 / 18:50 pm (CNA).

The publication of a leaked draft opinion in a pivotal Supreme Court abortion case on May 2 triggered a wave of protests by supporters of legalized abortion and acts of vandalism and violence targeting Catholic churches and pro-life organizations.

The draft opinion suggested that a conservative majority on the court is poised to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

Here is a compilation of reported incidents since May 2, by state:

California

The 10 a.m. Mass on May 8 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles was disrupted just before Communion by female protesters dressed in red gowns and large white hats. They were escorted from the church. The women shouted and unfurled a banner but were quickly escorted away, allowing the Mass to resume.

Colorado

St. John XXIII parish in Fort Collins, about an hour north of Denver, was tagged with graffiti in the early morning of May 7, police said. “My Body My Choice” and a symbol that appears to be an “A” signifying “anarchy” were written on the church’s exterior. Some exterior glass panels at the church also were broken.

The look and style of the graffiti appears similar to that which appeared on a Catholic church building in nearby Boulder a few days prior. Sacred Heart of Mary Parish was defaced with pro-abortion slogans the evening of May 3, marking the second time in less than a year that the parish has been targeted with graffiti of this sort.

Maryland

About 100 protesters marched from the home of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh to that of Chief Justice John Roberts, both in the Chevy Chase area, the evening of May 7. Demonstrators yelled “If you take away our choices, we will riot,” and “The whole world is watching.”

New York

Pro-abortion demonstrators rallied on May 7 outside the the Basilica of Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral (better known as “Old St. Pat’s”) in Lower Manhattan. The protest disrupted a monthly pro-life procession from the church to a nearby Planned Parenthood abortion clinic. A Franciscan friar was heckled, and a woman dressed in a bathing suit stuffed to simulate pregnancy danced in front of the church and crudely pretended to abort baby dolls.

The church’s pastor, Father Brian Graebe, later told Fox News, “We have received a number of threats to bomb the church, burn it down.”

Oregon

Oregon Right to Life reported that on the evening of May 8 Molotov cocktails were thrown at the organization’s offices in Keizer, igniting a small fire. The fire was quickly put out and no one was hurt.

Texas

The tabernacle was stolen overnight from St. Bartholomew the Apostle Catholic Church in Katy, the pastor reported May 9.

On May 8, graffiti saying “Pro-choice is pro-life” was spray-painted on the front and side doors of Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Houston.

A pro-life pregnancy center in Denton called the Loreto House was vandalized over Mother’s Day weekend. Messages saying “Not a clinic” and “Forced abortion is murder” were left on the center’s street sign, walls, and doors.

Virginia

First Care Women’s Health, a pro-life pregnancy resource center in Manassas, was vandalized on the night of May 8-9. “ABORTION IS A RIGHT,” and “LIARS” was written in black spray paint on the building’s exterior.

Outside the Alexandria home of Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the leaked draft opinion, protesters from Shut Down DC chanted May 9 “abort the court.”

Wisconsin

A fire was set at the headquarters of Wisconsin Family Action, a pro-life advocacy group, in Madison on May 8. Police said a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the building but did not ignite, but another fire was set. The building was unoccupied at the time and no one was hurt. outside of the building also sprayed with graffiti depicting an anarchy symbol, a coded anti-police slogan and the phrase, “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either.”


If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!

Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.


About Catholic News Agency 10092 Articles
Catholic News Agency (www.catholicnewsagency.com)

14 Comments

  1. We will probably never find the identity of the person who was responsible for the leak – the first in SC history, leaving us with the simple question – cui bono?

    And it’s going to get worse.

    • There is evidence it came from Sotomayor herself, confident there is no chance a liberal woman Justice would ever be impeached, especially one with phony affiliation with Catholicism.
      Additionally, in predictable fashion, Francis took the opportunity, not to defend pro-lifers, but to lash out again at traditional Catholics.

    • Addendum – This is just the beginning.

      It should be painfully obvious by now that violence is the only language these people speak – fluently.

      Saul Alinsky is proud of these people, and of their many defenders – around 95% of the MSM, not to mention Joe and Nancy.

      Reminder – The SC decision does not make abortion illegal – it merely returns the decision to the individual states, where it should have been in the first place.

  2. The CEO of Planned was on one of the liberal stations that first night after the leak was reported; she was just about in tears.

  3. Thank you for documenting these assaults on our freedoms, CWR.

    As the wise and courageous American, David Horowitz, has long said, “Inside every progressive, there’s a totalitarian screaming to get out.”

  4. I saw the video of the wee fat black woman in the bathing suit aborting baby dolls she was carrying around. I actually thought fur a wee second she was some fringe pro-lifer doing bad performance art. But she was “pro-choice”/pro-abortion. Talk about a Self Own! She was making the case against wee abortion with here weird antics nor fur it killing the wee baby dolls.

    According to the news the wee bathing suit lady was called “Crackhead Charlie” or something. She had the name Crackheid in her name. I BELIEVE IT!

    It was mental but that video has gone viral and makes the pro-aborts in mae opinion look wee crazy. The mask falls off. Thank God for stupid Proabort protestors.

    Cheers

  5. WHY PRO-ABORTION ACTIVISTS DESECRATE CHURCHES

    by Carl R. Trueman
    May 12, 2022

    Excerpt:

    Of course, profanation of the sacred is the standard approach of many of our political elites. President Trump’s casual attitude to marriage is one example. President Biden’s preference for the pieties necessary for election as a Democrat over the rather clear teaching of his own church is another. The scorn for the Supreme Court in recent days among elected officials, denizens of Hollywood, and opinion columnists indicates that this rot runs very deep among our ruling class. And it is no surprise that the profaning of the sacred is trickling down through society as institutions are treated with more and more contempt by all. The January 6 rioters and the ridiculous “handmaids” disrupting Masses have at least one thing in common: a moral vision that has no place for the aura that must surround our institutions, religious and secular, if they are to have any authority.

  6. An instance of human abortion is due not only to economic factors but also to the unique experience of any pregnant woman considering it in the light of her wants, needs, culture, personal understanding, sense of ought, in counterpoint with her existential crisis, in brief, her personal life at a momentous decision. When it comes to the issue of abortion, men should butt out. Abortion is a woman’s matter, not man’s. For it concerns her body and what gestates within her. Woman in her physical and intimate self, is not an existent to satisfy and corroborate any man’s preference, whether practical, political, ideological, or religious.

    Alito and the gang in SCOTUS -all Catholic-like-minded anti-abortion peers- are so wrong in intending to subsume the American woman’s body to their ideological will. The SCOTUS thereby furthers the ever increasing public contempt toward its procedure and rulings. Though unintentionally, to the citizenry, the gang of six Catholic judges also inevitably bring to mind the confessional Protestant and secular understanding of Catholicism and its culture as inimical to the US ethos. This hardly heralds favourably Catholicism’s future in this land.

    There is only one positive consequence to the abolition of abortion in the US, if it is true that mainly racial minorities -particularly Blacks- abort proportionally more than ‘white’ women. More racially minority babies will be born. This would be very good, increasing inevitably the pressure on majority white US to come to terms with a modified racial demography. White US would have to open venues for greater justice and opportunity to Blacks and to other racial minorities in the country, lest righteous socio-political violence rise to unprecedented intolerable levels. More black and minority babies may also translate into more miscegenation, assuring a quicker thorough ‘browning’ of the US, thereby, laying the ground for the lessening of the heinous racial divide that has always characterised the US throughout its history to the present day. Yes, there may be a silver lining after all to the dreadful abolition of legal abortion scheduled by the gang of six retrograde Catholic judges eager to impose their religious prejudice on the womenfolk of the US. May all said judges be successfully impeached and thereby booted some day, ASAP, out of the SCOTUS.

    • “When it comes to the issue of abortion, men should butt out.”

      What is a “man”?

      Sigh. You won’t recognize it, I suspect, but the thinly veiled sexism, irrationalism, and racism in your comment is both revealing and deeply troubling.

      • Read this with the inner eye of intelligence fully open. All possible compassionate succor and material aid to any woman who considers abortion, or aborts, the Church and State should offer and leave it at that, hands off, respecting the individual’s base freedom to live her life as she discovers or wills it to be.

        If any pope, prelate, priest, monk, nun, preacher, politician, judge or civil functionary be willing and able to die in the place of any woman who, running the inevitable risk of dying, aborts, then maybe said individual -pope, prelate, priest, monk, nun, preacher, politician, judge, or civil functionary, may have the right to dictate her life, indeed, to live It.

        Otherwise, when abortion is at play as a concrete possibility for a woman, it is not the time to marshal Christian rhetoric and butt in, seeking to moderate behaviour, and poach the woman’s soul in distress. Have a sense of limit. Respect the other in his otherness. Woman is not there to serve your desire of ratifying your religious ideology. She is an existent in her own right; en soi-même et pour soi-même.

        • Even if I was an atheist, I’d be anti-abortion, because I’d be pro-science and pro-fact.

          “Respect the other in his otherness.”

          Except for the unborn child. Of course. We get it. We just think, reasonably, that the hypocrisy is both impossible to ignore and ugly to behold.

    • Ms. Erwar appears to be attempting to impress the reader with her erudition which is vacant. She should know that nullifying Roe V Wade would not end all abortions in the U.S. The jurisdiction would return to the States where it priorly existed. She should also be aware that her disparaging of Catholic judges and other professed Catholics are not the only ones who recognize the barbarian destruction of unborn human beings who could survive if given a chance to live. There are many other Christians, Muslims, Jews and others who deplore the status of abortion until birth as the current program of the Democrats. She should also be aware that Ruth Bader Ginsberg recognized and objected to the justification of Roe V Wade as a correct, lawful interpretation of U.S. law. One of the Justices recently corroborated Ginsberg’s fault finding with Roe V Wade.

      Admittedly, there are numerous positions held by Americans on this subject as to when if at all the killing of the unborn is justified. However, one has to be macabre and evil to justify the killing of an infant whose gestation period would allow life to continue but is “extinguished” because someone determined she did not want the infant inside of her “My Body” mentality. What percentage of living human beings do you estimate were “planned” and desired at the time of conception — small indeed. I think Ms Erwar should be grateful her mother and attending physician let her survive. She should also get her facts in order before her vicious attack on SCOTUS whose justices have legal education, experience and brilliance many pay grades above Ms.Erwar.

    • Considering that the Left cannot define what a woman is and believes men can get pregnant, your assertion that men should “butt out” is meaningless.

Leave a Reply to Carl E. Olson Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

All comments posted at Catholic World Report are moderated. While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published. Thank you.


*