Vandals leave bloody trail, red graffiti at pregnancy clinic, North Carolina cops say

When police officers called Kristi Brown to tell her that the pregnancy consultation clinic she runs had been vandalized, they warned her that it was “bad.”

“I didn’t know what ‘bad’ meant,” Brown, the executive director of Mountain Area Pregnancy Services, a Christian ministry organization that provides consultation to women and men going through crisis pregnancies, told McClatchy News.

When she got to the door of her clinic in Asheville, North Carolina, on the morning of June 7, she found threatening messages sprayed in red paint on three sides of the building and the sidewalk as well as broken windows and shattered glass.

Painted on the property were the messages, “If abortions aren’t safe, neither are you!” and “No forced birth,” as well as an anarchist symbol, according to a news release from the Asheville Police Department.

Officers also found blood left on a window and “bloody trail” on the property that they believe came from one of the vandals who injured themselves, the release says.

“It was a direct attack on our ministry,” Brown said. “... this is just disheartening.”

Brown said the clinic was empty when the building was vandalized and no clients or staff were injured. She said the clinic continued to serve clients on June 7 by bringing them in through a back door, which had not been spray-painted.

Brown said the clinic is a “life-affirming ministry” that works with women and families going through unplanned pregnancies or the loss of a pregnancy.

The clinic’s website states that it “does not perform or refer for abortions.”

“If they bring it up and want to discuss abortion, we talk about it,” she said. “What we do is we share with them the North Carolina law on abortion ... We’ll do that, and then the flip side is, we will also talk to them about the consequences of abortion.”

In North Carolina, a 72-hour waiting period is required for anyone seeking an abortion, and the procedure is banned after 20 weeks of gestation, according to state law.

Intense debate and protests over abortion rights swept the county since Politico published a draft majority opinion leaked from the U.S. Supreme Court in early May that showed the justices poised to overturn Roe v. Wade ⁠— the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion in the United States. The court is expected to issue a final decision on the matter in June.

Brown said she believes the spotlight on abortion rights likely drew more attention to her clinic. She said the organization has received some “harassing” phone calls and emails in the past on the topic of abortion but has never experienced threats or vandalism like what she encountered on June 7.

“We have taken steps to shore up this ministry so it is a safe, inviting place for everyone who enters here,” she said. “I hope and pray that there is no future attack on this building, this ministry, (but) every pregnancy center in America has to be vigilant at this time.”

Since the leak of the draft opinion, multiple anti-abortion centers and faith-based pregnancy clinics have been vandalized across the country, including in Virginia, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin, where vandals threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of an anti-abortion center.

Abortion clinics and women’s health centers that offer abortions have also historically been targeted by vandals and violent protesters.

In 2020, the year for which the most recent statistics were available, death threats and threats of harm against abortion providers increased to 200 from 92 in 2019, according to the National Abortion Federation, a professional association of abortion providers. The organization also recorded a 125% increase in reports of assault and battery outside abortion clinics in 2020 over the previous year.

This story was originally published June 7, 2022 at 2:17 PM with the headline "Vandals leave bloody trail, red graffiti at pregnancy clinic, North Carolina cops say."