USA – I Wanted an Abortion. My Friends Had Other Ideas.

“Progressive” anti-abortion activists claim to be a feminist wing of the movement. But when one of their former compatriots tried to end her pregnancy, they went to extreme lengths to stop her.

By Rebecca Grant
Nov 11, 2025

On the morning of June 26, 2024, Charlotte Isenberg woke up worried.

The 20-year-old was pregnant and had an appointment for an ultrasound at a Planned Parenthood in Charlotte, North Carolina. She didn’t dread the scan itself, a state requirement 72 hours before having a medication abortion. Instead, she was afraid of who might be waiting for her at the clinic.

After a 30-mile drive, Isenberg and her boyfriend pulled through the gate that protected the Planned Parenthood from prying eyes. It was as they backed into a parking space that Isenberg spotted her: a woman who’d traveled 400 miles from Washington, D.C. A once-friend whom Isenberg had not told the exact details of her appointment.

Continued: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a69167837/charlotte-isenberg-anti-abortion-activist-story/

Post-Roe, anti-abortion groups target law protecting clinics from violence

The Face Act penalizes people for blockading and threatening abortion clinics. Anti-abortion activists want it repealed

Carter Sherman
Sat 16 Sep 2023

The inside of the abortion clinic was chaotic. Anti-abortion protesters lined the walls. A few had sat down on the clinic’s lime green chairs and draped themselves in chains. “Please inspire these parents to keep their babies!” one man shouted, before he started singing about the Virgin Mary. As some of the protesters sang and prayed loudly, the police officers crowded inside the clinic tried to urge them to move. They didn’t want to budge.

It was 22 October 2020, and one anti-abortion advocate was livestreaming a group of activists who were at the Washington DC-area clinic to, in their view, “rescue” people from having abortions. One redheaded young woman turned to the camera.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/16/face-act-anti-abortion-threaten-clinics

US anti-abortion activist who kept fetal remains convicted of blockading clinic

Lauren Handy and other anti-abortion protesters invaded a Washington DC clinic in 2020 and blocked people from entering

Carter Sherman
Tue 29 Aug 2023

Lauren Handy, the anti-abortion activist who kept five fetuses in her Washington DC home, was on Tuesday found guilty of breaking federal law by blockading an abortion clinic.

The charges stem from an incident in October 2020, when Handy and nine other anti-abortion protesters invaded a Washington abortion clinic, according to an October 2022 indictment of the group. Handy used a fake name to book an appointment at the clinic, then blocked people from entering the waiting room while other defendants chained themselves together inside the clinic, prosecutors alleged. One of the clinic’s nurses sprained her ankle after she was pushed by a protester, according to the indictment.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/29/lauren-handy-anti-abortion-convicted-blockading-clinic

29.08.2023

News

anti-choice blockade

anti-choice clinic invasion

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice terrorism

anti-choice violence

FACE Act

Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act

Federal judge says constitutional right to abortion may still exist, despite Dobbs

The judge said the Supreme Court’s ruling concluded only that the 14th Amendment included no right to abortion, but stopped short of definitively ruling out other aspects of the Constitution.

By KYLE CHENEY and JOSH GERSTEIN
Feb 6, 2023

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., suggested Monday that there may be a constitutional right to abortion baked into the 13th Amendment — an area she said went unexplored by the Supreme Court in its momentous decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade.

In a pending criminal case against several anti-abortion activists, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concluded only that the 14th Amendment included no right to abortion but stopped short of definitively ruling out other aspects of the Constitution that might apply.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/06/federal-judge-constitutional-right-abortion-dobbs-00081391

06.02.2023

News

13th Amendment

14th Amendment

Colleen Kollar-Kotelly

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Equal Rights Amendment

involuntary servitude

As millions were stripped of abortion rights, mainstream outlets uplifted these five anti-choice leaders behind Roe’s reversal

WRITTEN BY JASMINE GEONZON
PUBLISHED 01/09/23

2022 marked an unprecedented assault on abortion rights, as the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June and multiple states quickly moved to restrict or outright ban abortion and other reproductive care. While millions of Americans navigated under these new harsh abortion restrictions, the largest newsrooms in the country gave their platforms to the leading figures behind the effort to reverse Roe and demonize abortion care.

Marjorie Dannenfelser (Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America)
As the president of anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Marjorie Dannenfelser has been key in backing anti-choice political candidates and supporting the passage of legal restrictions against reproductive rights. Late last year, for example, Dannenfelser stood alongside Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) when he introduced legislation to implement a 15-week national abortion ban.

Continued; https://www.mediamatters.org/health-care/millions-were-stripped-abortion-rights-mainstream-outlets-uplifted-these-five-anti

USA – Medical waste company denies giving fetuses to antiabortion activists

D.C. police say they are still working to determine how the fetuses were obtained and whether any laws were broken

By Michelle Boorstein, Peter Hermann and Marissa J. Lang, Washington Post
April 5, 2022

Antiabortion activists said Tuesday they obtained five fetuses from a medical waste disposal driver who was outside a Washington abortion clinic, an assertion the waste disposal company denies.

Plainclothes officers removed the fetuses from a Southeast apartment where one of the activists was staying. D.C. police are still working to determine how the fetuses were obtained and whether any laws were broken.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/04/05/lauren-handy-abortion-dc/

USA – Anti-Abortion Activist Bragged About ‘Dumpster Diving’ for Fetuses

Police found five fetuses inside the home of Lauren Handy, who was indicted for allegedly blockading a clinic.

By Carter Sherman
April 1, 2022

The anti-abortion activist accused of storing fetal remains in her home has spent years tweeting about scouring abortion clinic grounds for fetuses and then burying them.

Lauren Handy, indicted Wednesday for allegedly blockading an abortion clinic, has not hidden her interest in creeping around abortion clinics. In a Twitter thread published in October 2020, Handy said that, by 2016, she was “regularly dumpster diving” at a Maryland abortion clinic to retrieve fetuses for a “proper burial.”

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/epx9dn/lauren-handy-fetuses-dumpster-diving

Anti-Abortion Activist With Five Fetuses Has Worried DC Clinic Workers for Years

The group affiliated with activist Lauren Handy claims to have additional fetuses.

WRITTEN BY SYLVIE MCNAMARA
PUBLISHED ON APRIL 1, 2022

On Wednesday, police found five fetuses in the Capitol Hill home of Lauren Handy, a 28-year-old, self-described “Catholic anarchist” who is a fixture of the DC anti-abortion scene. Approached by a WUSA9 reporter, Handy declined to elaborate on the findings, except to say—quite correctly—that “people will freak out when they hear.”

The Handy-affiliated group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) emailed Washingtonian a press release late Thursday night that teases the existence of an unspecified number of “remaining aborted fetuses (that have not been turned over to police).” PAAU promises to reveal the number of remaining fetuses, in addition to answering other questions, at a press conference next week.

Continued: https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/04/01/anti-abortion-activist-with-five-fetuses-has-worried-dc-clinic-workers-for-years/

USA – 5 Fetuses Removed From Home of Anti-Abortion Activist, Group Says

The police said they had gone to a home in Washington to investigate a tip about “potential biohazard material” when officers found the fetuses inside. An investigation was continuing.

By Michael Levenson
Published March 31, 2022

The police said on Thursday that five fetuses had been removed from a home in Washington that, according to an anti-abortion group, belonged to an activist who was charged by the Justice Department this week with blocking access to an abortion clinic in October 2020.

The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia would release only the address where the fetuses were found. Terrisa Bukovinac, the founder and executive director of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, confirmed that the home belonged to Lauren Handy, 28, the group’s director of activism, who was arrested and charged with federal civil rights offenses this week.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/31/us/fetus-anti-abortion-home.html

USA – Five sets of fetal remains found in anti-abortion activist’s home, DC police say

Lauren Handy claims she gained access to organ bank at university in Seattle but authorities have not disclosed source of fetuses

Jessica Glenza and Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Thu 31 Mar 2022

Five sets of human fetal remains were recovered from the Washington DC home of an anti-abortion activist after a raid, the capital’s Metropolitan police department confirmed to the Guardian on Thursday.

The activist, a woman named Lauren Handy, 28, is a leader of the group Progressive Anti-Abortion uprising (PAAU) and has described herself as a “Catholic anarchist” in the past.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/31/five-fetuses-found-anti-abortion-activists-home-dc

31.03.2022