If Abortions Aren t Safe, Neither Are You
On a Sunday morning in May, Wisconsin Family Action, a pro-life group housed in a brick building in a suburb of the state capital of Madison, was fire-bombed.
Windows were blown out. Furniture was destroyed. Someone spray-painted, in neat, girly handwriting: if abortions aren t safe, then you aren t either.
When she saw federal agents carting buckets of evidence out of the building, hours later, Julianne Appling, Wisconsin Family Action s executive director, figured that someone would be arrested, indicted, prosecuted that justice would be served.
That was Mother s Day, the first weekend after the Dobbs leak, the Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade and throw the question of abortion back to the states. While tens of thousands of Americans across the country were protesting the impending decision, Wisconsin Family Action was burning. (Just days before, 1,000 or so people had demonstrated less than five miles away, in front of the state capitol.) The attack on Wisconsin Family Action was one of many attacks on pro-life facilities that weekend.
It s been almost five months, and Appling says she still has no idea who blew up the facility which is fighting to remove all exemptions from Wisconsin s recently implemented abortion ban.
When there s this level of inaction with the investigation, you start asking questions, Appling told me. Is it who we are and what we believe?