Minnesota Shooter Allegedly Targeted Abortion Clinics At Time Of Threats, Lax Protections

Minnesota shooting suspect Vance Boelter allegedly targeted abortion providers for future violence, a jarring detail in the evidence as the Trump administration systematically rolls back protections passed when anti-abortion violence was at a fever pitch.

Boelter, who allegedly shot two Democratic state lawmakers, had included abortion rights advocates and clinics on his hit list, according to acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph Thompson.

“It was politically motivated, and there clearly was some through line with abortion because of the groups that were on the list, and other things that I’ve heard were in this manifesto,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said on NBC soon after the shootings. 

Boelter’s roommate told reporters that he considered abortion to be “murder.” A clip from two years ago that circulated after the shootings showed him preaching that the country was in a “bad place,” that many U.S. churches don’t oppose abortion. Both lawmakers that he allegedly shot — Rep. Melissa Hortman, who was killed along with her husband, and Sen. John Hoffman, who was seriously wounded, as was his wife — supported abortion rights. 

Boelter was taken into custody after the two attacks. Still, the threat of anti-abortion violence comes at a time when federal protections for abortion clinics have slackened under the Trump administration. Threats, however, have not, continuing unabated since the overturn of Roe in 2022.

“In the last two years, there have been 296 incidents of death threats or other threats of harm aimed at abortion providers and patients,” said the National Abortion Federation’s 2024 report. That number is up from 218 incidents in 2022, which is up from 182 in 2021. 

There have also been attacks carried out to fruition: In March 2022, two men firebombed a Planned Parenthood in Costa Mesa, and, per the FBI, planned to attack another after the Dobbs decision that June. In 2023, a man set fire to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Peoria, Illinois. 

At the same time, congressional Republicans are trying to roll back protections for abortion clinics and other centers for reproductive health — a move that is all the more glaring after a suicide bombing at a Palm Springs fertility clinic in May. 

Last week, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee voted to advance Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-TX) FACE Repeal Act, which would repeal “provisions of federal criminal law that prohibit conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with persons who are seeking to (1) obtain or provide reproductive health services, or (2) exercise their right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”

The FACE Act was initially passed in 1994, amid an upswing in anti-abortion violence. A group called the Army of God was on the forefront of clinic bombings and arson. A Florida doctor, Dr. David Gunn, was murdered in 1993 for providing abortions, and an anti-abortion extremist attempted to kill Dr. George Tiller in Kansas months later (Tiller was eventually killed by an anti-abortion activist in 2009). Gunn’s replacement at the Pensacola clinic where he had worked, Dr. John Britton, was assassinated by an anti-abortion activist a little over a year after Gunn was killed.

Gunn’s murder was a prominent factor in the The FACE Act’s passage, which ultimately garnered significant Republican support.

The FACE Act repeal will still need to go through a full House and Senate vote; Republicans control both chambers. 

The Trump administration has also unilaterally loosened clinic and provider protections, in January pardoning a tranche of anti-abortion extremists and advertising that the Justice Department doesn’t intend to enforce the FACE Act in any but the most extreme cases.

“To ensure that federal law enforcement and prosecutorial resources are devoted to the most serious violations of federal law, future abortion-related FACE Act prosecutions and civil actions will be permitted only in extraordinary circumstances, or in cases presenting significant aggravating factors, such as death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage,” wrote the DOJ’s Chad Mizelle in a January memo. “Cases not presenting significant aggravating factors can adequately be addressed under state or local law. Additionally, until further notice, no new abortion-related FACE Act actions — criminal or civil — will be permitted without authorization from the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.”

He also ordered the dismissal of three ongoing FACE Act cases.

“I want to be clear that this administration stands by you,” Vice President J.D. Vance told the crowd at the March for Life in January. “We stand with you, and most importantly, we stand with the most vulnerable and the basic principle that people exercising the right to protest on behalf of the most vulnerable should never have the government go after them ever again.”