Violent extremism is on the rise nationally. At the beginning of 2021, the nation was horrified to witness far-right extremists attacking the US Capitol. For abortion providers, the overlap between anti-abortion extremists and white supremacist terrorists’ movements is all too familiar.[i] There is a documented link between white supremist and alt-right groups with anti-abortion factions, including such extremist organizations as Groypers[ii], Patriot Front[iii] and Vanguard[iv]. Two white power groups, Project Veritas and Proud Boys—both with local roots—clearly corroborate this. Project Veritas, founded by Mamaroneck resident James O’Keefe[v], is infamous for agitating anti-abortion sentiment through the production of falsified videos including of Planned Parenthood[vi] and of discredited claims about the Pfizer Covid vaccine[vii] and fetal stem cell use.[viii] The Proud Boys, founded by Larchmont resident Gavin McInnes[ix] and designated as a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center[x] and Anti-Defamation League[xi], and as an extremist group by the FBI[xii], is renowned for its violence and misogyny.[xiii] The Proud Boys has provided “security” to anti-abortion radicals here in New York[xiv], and elsewhere. The Proud Boys and Project Veritas have joined forces in the past.[xv]
Attacks on abortion clinics, patients, and providers have hit a record high, and have returned to the tri-state New York area, including Westchester County. 2020, the most recent year for which data has been collected, was the most violent on record, and it continues to increase dramatically. The National Abortion Federation (NAF) which has been tracking violence against abortion providers and clinics since 1977, stated unequivocally that the violence that providers face today is “beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.” Despite a global pandemic, and mandated shut-downs, abortion providers experienced a rise in targeted violence and disruption, “with a sharp increase in vandalism, assault and battery, death threats/threats of harm, stalking, and hoax devices/suspicious packages over 2019.”[xvi]
The Guardian reported, “More recently, anti-abortion activists have escalated their violence, returning to the murderous extremism that characterized the movement in the 1990s: in Knoxville, a fire that burned down a Planned Parenthood clinic on New Year’s Eve [2021] was ruled an arson. Maybe the anti-choice crowd is taking tips from their friends in the alt-right.”[xvii]
The attack on All Women’s Health and Medical Services in White Plains, NY on Saturday, November 27, 2021, is, by all indications, just the beginning of the war on providers, patients, and reproductive health care facilities in Westchester. The anti-abortion agitators invaded the facility and swarmed the sidewalk in front of the building, the private parking lot, the driveway and private medical entrance located in the parking lot. On January 22, 2022 thirty activists returned. Their calls to organize can be found on social media and online papers. Warnings locally and nationally of their violence are issued by the National Abortion Federation.
The November 27th assault was orchestrated by Red Rose Rescue which was created by Operation Rescue operatives Monica Migliorino Miller and John Ryan. Operation Rescue is recognized as one of the most militant anti-abortion terrorist organizations.[xviii] They took the idea of “red rose” from Mary Wagner, a Canadian Christian radical who occupied clinics in Toronto, Canada[xix]. These extremists are interconnected with a broad network of anti-choice radical groups, including but not limited to Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, Church@the Rock, Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, and Witness for Life. The leaders of this militant wing of the anti-abortion movement float from one organization into another, promoting organizational fluidity. These groups are supported by white supremist organizations including The Proud Boys.
The act of invading and then occupying abortion care health care facilities while other agitators overwhelm patients approaching the medical center is now the modus operandi of anti-abortion agitators like Red Rose Rescue and Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU). They proudly video tape their actions as they trespass, breaking state and federal property laws.[xx] Their religious online newspapers[xxi] never dispute their invasions but instead brag, ignoring the psychological and physical damage they are inflicting plus their illegal trespassing. Their philosophy to justify trespassing, and harassing and intimidating patients and providers inside and outside of reproductive health facilities without fear of reprisal is “[they’re] under no ethical or moral obligation to follow an unethical law [sic].”[xxii] Not only do they contemn federal and state laws, they do not respect an individual’s person, private property, HIPAA, or anti-harassment/intimidation protocols.
As NYS Attorney General Letitia James details, these anti-abortion agitators have become increasingly violent.
“In Queens, we’re suing to end a weekly pattern of threatening, obstructive and violent activity by a network of anti-abortion protesters at Choices Women’s Medical Center in Jamaica. Since 2012, these activists have subjected incoming patients to a campaign of unwanted physical contact, as well as verbal abuse, threats of harm and lies about the clinic’s hours and its services. Activists sometimes pin women against the clinic’s exterior wall or parking meters or force them into the street into traffic. They mob patients arriving by car, using their bodies to block doors and shoving literature at the passengers. They also make violent threats against both volunteers and patients, citing past murderous assaults on abortion clinics.”[xxiii]
The demographic of the perpetrators of this violence is expanding. Many of the organizers and activists today are younger and more anarchistic, with a propensity to attack those soliciting medical treatment, in addition to the providers and facilities.
Those who invaded All Women’s Health and Medical Services on November 27, 2021, have a national presence but are local residents, well known in the tri-state region. Each of the three men—all members of Red Rose Rescue and identified by White Plains Police as Fr. Fidelis Moscinski, William Goodman and Matthew Connolly—has been arrested multiple times for aggressive anti-abortion actions, and again on November 27th. Among their many arrests for invading reproductive care facilities, these three men were recently arrested for terrorizing patients at a Planned Parenthood in West Chester, Pennsylvania,[xxiv] and are now on trial in Washington DC and New Jersey[xxv] for similar assaults. Proudly disregarding all laws, on its website, Life Site News, they state this marks Red Rose Rescue’s “seventeenth rescue in the United States since September 2017.”[xxvi] The two women who posed as patients also have arrest records but had left All Women’s Health and Medical Services just prior to the arrival of the police and were, therefore, not arrested on November 27th.
Moscinski, who reportedly is a local resident living in the Bronx and who also leads the controversial Witness for Life program, has been arrested at least eleven times in the in recent years for invading abortion clinics as part of the Red Rose Rescue movement. The other two[xxvii], along with PAAU’s Director of Activism Lauren Handy[xxviii] and Operation Rescue operative and Red Rose Rescue founder Monica Migliorino Miller, have also been arrested innumerable times. Well versed in the system, Moscinski champions refusing to pay the bond because “[w]hen you post bail, the court has the money now, and if you are found guilty later, and you refuse to pay the fine, the fine can be deducted from the bail you posted.”[xxix]
These attacks will increase as we approach the announcement of the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Texas SB 8 and the many copycat laws around the country are inflaming agitators with a sense of power. They have already become more violent. Unfortunately, neither the federal law, The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE), nor the NYS law, The Reproductive Health Care Facilities Access Act, address the public and personal safety dangers specific to Westchester County outside or inside the premises of reproductive health care facilities, health care centers or places of worship. Other communities like Jacksonville Mississippi recognize this need and are passing legislation
It is imperative that the County of Westchester pass legislation to ensure safe use of and access to reproductive health care facilities and health care centers. The proposed legislation does this. It institutes buffer zones, an approach adopted in other communities like Jackson, Mississippi (2019)[xxx], and upheld in the courts.[xxxi]
Buffer zones are an additional level of protection that can exist at the local level, limiting how close anti-abortion protesters are permitted to get to a facility, invitees, patients and providers. They are a proven way to balance safe access to reproductive health care facilities with the First Amendment rights of anti-abortion individuals to distribute literature or engage in conversations with permitting parties. Floating buffer zones, sometimes called bubble zones, create moving areas of protection around particular people (typically clinic staff and patients) and prohibit protesters from coming within a certain distance of the specified person. Buffer zones are an important additional protection against anti-abortion harassment and physical assault of patients, invitees and providers.
[i] White Nationalists are flocking to the anti-abortion movement, Moira Donegan, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/24/white-nationalists-are-flocking-to-the-us-anti-abortion-movement
[ii] Anti-Defamation League, https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounders/groyper-army-and-america-first
[iii] White Supremacist Group Crashes Anti-Abortion Rally in the Loop,
[iv] Patriot Front’s anti-abortion advocacy at March for Life sends a clear message, Renee Bracey Serman & Lizz Winstead,
[v] Nonprofit Explorer (including Board members and salaries), https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/272894856/202003179349305580/full
[vi] Project Veritas, https://www.projectveritas.com/search/?query=planned%20parenthood&page=1&indices%5Bprod_videos%5D%5Bconfigure%5D%5BhitsPerPage%5D=2&indices%5Bprod_posts%5D%5Bconfigure%5D%5BhitsPerPage%5D=2&indices%5Bprod_investigations%5D%5Bconfigure%5D%5BhitsPerPage%5D=2
[vii] Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine does not contain fetal cells, contrary to online claims,
[viii] NOT REAL NEWS: A Look at What Didn’t Happen This Week,
[ix] Proud Boys’ McInnes Hates No-Hate Signs In Hometown, The Patch, https://patch.com/new-york/larchmont/proud-boys-mcinnes-hates-no-hate-signs-hometown
[x] Southern Poverty Law Center, Extremist Files, Designated Hate Group, https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys
[xi] Anti-Defamation League, https://www.adl.org/proudboys
[xii] FBI now classifies far-right Proud Boys as ‘extremist group’, documents say,
[xiii] “Venerating the Housewife:” A Primer on Proud Boys’ Misogyny,
https://www.adl.org/blog/venerating-the-housewife-a-primer-on-proud-boys-misogyny
[xiv] Anti-abortion protesters accused of harassing women at NYC clinic used Proud Boys as bodyguards, https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-anti-abortion-protesters-proud-boys-20210305-kiro7yy2hrhgtni75lqoymeplu-story.html
[xv] The Cozy Relationship Between Project Veritas and the Proud Boys, https://newrepublic.com/article/159543/cozy-relationship-project-veritas-proud-boys
[xvi] NAF, National Abortion Federation, 2020 Violence and Disruption Statistics, https://5aa1b2xfmfh2e2mk03kk8rsx-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020_NAF_VD_Stats.pdf
[xvii] White Nationalists are flocking to the anti-abortion movement, Moira Donegan, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/24/white-nationalists-are-flocking-to-the-us-anti-abortion-movement
[xviii] The Assassination of Dr.Tiller: The Marginality of Abortion in American Culture and Medicine, Carole Joffe &Tracy Weitz
[xix] The Militant Wing of the Anti-Abortion Movement Is Back—And It’s Never Been Closer to Victory, Nina Liss-Schultz, https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2018/09/abortion-clinic-blockade-red-rose-rescue/
[xx] On November 16th PAAU Activists were…, https://fb.watch/aP-jbY3heE/
[xxi] Red Rose Rescue comes to White Plains, NY, https://hvcljournal.typepad.com/lifenet/2021/11/red-rose-rescue-comes-to-white-plains-ny.html?fbclid=IwAR2VZ5IpEqG8SiykN_XnGhCu251Nh4sOYt8lxHGNxTGHchGl1me_rSo7S7E
[xxii] On November 16th PAAU Activists were…, https://fb.watch/aP-jbY3heE/
[xxiii] N.Y. has its own abortion access battles, https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-new-york-has-its-own-abortion-battles-20210903-5uxp7wukpvfcban575o4ypaf7y-story.html
[xxiv] Red Rose rescues in Pennsylvania target Planned Parenthood, https://www.cal-catholic.com/red-rose-rescues-in-pennsylvania-target-planned-parenthood/
[xxv] Police arrest four pro-lifers after they enter Planned Parenthood facility, counsel mothers to choose life, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/police-arrest-four-pro-lifers-after-they-enter-planned-parenthood-facility-counsel-mothers-to-choose-life/
[xxvi] IBID
[xxvii] Pro-life supporters heading to circuit court after abortion clinic protest, https://nbc25news.com/news/local/4-pro-life-protesters-head-to-circuit-court-after-abortion-clinic-protest
[xxviii]Lauren Handy facebook, https://www.facebook.com/lauren.handy.52
[xxix] Red Rose rescues in Pennsylvania target Planned Parenthood, https://www.cal-catholic.com/red-rose-rescues-in-pennsylvania-target-planned-parenthood/
[xxx] Federal Abortion Federation, https://prochoice.org/breaking-jackson-city-council-passes-buffer-zone/
[xxxi] New York v Griepp et al (2021)
In this civil enforcement proceeding in 2021 brought by the Attorney General of New York, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Amon, J.) denied a preliminary injunction but did not disparage the NYC 15’ buffer, or the NYS and federal FACE laws in any way.”In regard to the cross-appeal, the court affirmed that the district court’s conclusion that the Defendant George violated FACE, NYSCAA, and the City Act by physically obstructing patients; the statutes do not violate the First Amendment; and the OAG has parens patrias standing to sue under the City Act.” https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca2/18-2454/18-2454-2021-03-10.html
Bruni v. City of Pittsburgh (2019)
Pittsburgh ordinance creates a fifteen-foot “buffer zone” outside the entrance of any hospital or healthcare facility.”[n]o person or persons shall knowingly congregate, patrol, picket or demonstrate” in the prescribed zone. The Third Circuit ruled in 2019 that the ordinance is constitutional and does not violate protesters’ rights. The US Supreme Court refused to hear the case. https://casetext.com/case/bruni-v-city-of-pittsburgh-5
Turco v. City of Englewood 2019
Englewood’s ordinance created two semicircular buffer zones extended outwards eight feet from either side of the facility’s entrance. The third buffer zone spanned the width of the facility’s entrance and extended to the street.
The District Court Struck down Englewood ordinance but the Third Circuit overturned the lower court’s ruling and upheld the City of Englewood ordinance. https://scarincilawyer.com/third-circuit-addresses-abortion-clinic-buffer-zone/
Hill v. Colorado (2000)
In 1993, the Colorado Legislature enacted both a floating buffer as well as a fixed one. The law requires protesters to stay eight feet from anyone entering or leaving an abortion clinic, as long as the clinic visitor is within 100 feet of the entrance. It was challenged and ultimately upheld by the US Supreme Court. The Court upheld the law by a 6-3 vote in its 2000 decision Hill v. Colorado.The majority reasoned that the law was not a speech regulation, but simply a “regulation of the places where some speech may occur.” The Court also emphasized that the law applied to all demonstrators regardless of viewpoint. “The majority determined that the state’s interests in protecting access and privacy were unrelated to the suppression of certain types of speech. States and municipalities have special government interests in certain areas, including schools, courthouses, polling places, private homes and medical clinics, the Court said.”https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/topics/freedom-of-assembly/abortion-protests-buffer-zones/