The headquarters of an anti-abortion group in Madison, Wisconsin, was torched Sunday morning in an act of vandalism, including an attempted use of a Molotov cocktail and graffiti reading “If abortions aren’t safe, then you are.” neither,” said the police.
No one in the group, Wisconsin Family Action, was in the building at the time and no injuries were reported. Although the Molotov cocktail thrown through a window failed to ignite, the vandal or vandals started another fire nearby, authorities said. The fire set a part of a wall on fire.
Madison police did not say whether it had made any arrests or whether more than one person was involved.
“We have notified our federal partners of this incident and are working with them and the Madison Fire Department as we investigate this arson,” the department said in a statement.
The attack came nearly a week after the leak of a draft Supreme Court ruling that would quash Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. Wisconsin has a law banning abortions more than a century older than Roe, but Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, has said he would block its implementation. Wisconsin Family Action is a not-for-profit political advocacy organization that promotes conservative policies on various issues, including abortion, within the state government of Wisconsin.
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“There’s nothing we’ve done to justify this. We should be able to take sides without fearing for our lives,” said Julaine Appling, president of Wisconsin Family Action. “If anyone had been in the office, they would have at least been injured.”
The Madison Fire Department first received a report about the fire around 6 a.m. on Sunday. Firefighters and police officers arrived shortly afterwards and quickly had the fire under control. Ms. Appling said she learned about the attack later in the morning as she prepared for Mother’s Day brunch at her church in Watertown, Wisconsin.
“I got a call from building management here saying there had been a break-in and a fire had started,” Ms Appling said. She then went with a team member to the building, where they discovered “the havoc and material damage.”
Ms. Appling said her office was the main target of the attack. Two windows had been smashed and water used to put out the fire had caused more damage. Ms Appling said the graffiti was particularly disturbing. “When I drove to the office and saw that, my immediate reaction was astonished at how overt the threat was,” she said. The graffiti featured an anarchist symbol and the numbers 1312, short for an anti-police slur.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin also denounced the violence in a statement. “Our work to protect continued access to reproductive care is rooted in love,” said Tanya Atkinson, the group’s president. “We condemn all forms of violence and hatred within our communities.”
In a statement to DailyExpertNews, Tony Perkins, the chairman of the Family Research Council, which works with Wisconsin Family Action, attributed the attack to left-wing extremists seeking to intimidate opponents of abortion, swearing they would fail. † “We are grateful for the unwavering leadership of Wisconsin Family Action and the dozens of family policy councils across the country committed to the sanctity of all human life,” he added.
The north side of Madison, where Wisconsin Family Action calls its home, is not a sleepy neighborhood. Right off a busy street, International Lane, the group’s long brown office building sits adjacent to the Dane County Regional Airport, among other nondescript corporate offices. All businesses were empty on Sunday morning, although a steady stream of cars passed by.
Ms. Appling said she and others at the organization had received threats in the past and that she knew some people would get angry after the draft Supreme Court ruling was leaked.
The State of Roe v. Wade
What is Roe v. Wade? Roe v. Wade is a landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States. The 7-2 ruling was announced on Jan. 22, 1973. Judge Harry A. Blackmun, a humble Midwestern Republican and defender of the right to abortion, wrote the majority opinion.
“I knew automatically that anyone who took a stance in favor of the way the advice was written should probably pay more attention to their safety,” she said. Still, this kind of direct attack was shocking and she said it had shaken her sense of security.
“My tendency is that I don’t feel very comfortable when our team comes on Monday,” she said. “I will probably have to come and deal with insurance and building management. But I’m not sure I want people to come in and, you know, occupy the area in our office where we have a lot of windows to the outside world.”
She also said she would work to implement new security measures in the office.
Madison Police Department said arson investigators were working with the fire service to confirm the cause of the fire. In a statement on Sunday, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes acknowledged the heightened tensions in the community following the leaked draft and condemned the attack.
“Our department supports and continues to support people to speak freely and openly about their faith,” the statement said, “but we believe that all acts of violence, including destruction of property, do not help in any way.”