Boston, Mass., Mar 6, 2023 / 14:20 pm

Vandals smashed the windows of a pro-life pregnancy center in Minneapolis and spray-painted it with graffiti in the middle of the night March 3, in the latest incident in a wave of attacks against crisis pregnancy centers.

“It’s just disheartening,” Tammy Kocher, executive director of New Life Family Services, which oversees the First Care clinic, told CNA Monday.

“Why do you want to hurt single moms and families that are struggling, who need resources?” she asked of those responsible for the attack.

Video surveillance shows two masked individuals at about 1 a.m. tagging the clinic with graffiti and breaking the windows with a hammer, she said.

Among other statements, the graffiti on the clinic said “If abortions arn’t safe neither r u” and “Jane was here.”

A group called Jane’s Revenge has claimed responsibility for similar attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers in a wave of attacks since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Kocher said the center has yet to estimate the damage but expect it will exceed $20,000.

“I hope that they are held accountable for the damage they’ve done to our center and or any other places they’ve done that to,” she said. “They should be prosecuted.”

Local police told the clinic staff that the attack is a “federal hate crime” and falls under the FACE Act, which is a 1993 federal law that prohibits “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services.”

The act’s protections include pro-life pregnancy centers and places of worship as well. However, the Biden administration has almost exclusively used the act to target pro-lifers.

Police referred the vandalism to the Department of Justice, Kocher said.

The clinic is one of five that New Life Family Services oversees. The clinics provide baby clothes, car seats, strollers, and 100,000 diapers to families in need each year. The clinic has licensed social workers who guide more than 2,000 women through a variety of challenges including homelessness and domestic violence.

Kocher said that her clinic provides all its services to women and families for free. The clinic is situated in a low-income neighborhood in Minneapolis where there is a high level of poverty, she said.

“Every woman deserves to feel cared for and supported through an unexpected pregnancy. And so we provide professional holistic support,” she said.

Kocher called the attack “strange timing,” as Minnesota has recently taken steps to lessen restrictions on abortion, legalizing it “up to birth,” she said.

In January, a Minnesota bill titled the Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act, enshrined a constitutional right to “reproductive freedom,” ensuring the right to abortion in Minnesota up to birth for any reason as well as the right to contraception and sterilization.

“There’s so much misinformation and false information put out about pregnancy centers that just simply aren’t true. And they’re especially not true of our centers,” Kocher said.

“Abortion is legal through birth now. So why do they feel the need to target pregnancy centers? I don’t understand,” she said.