One of the most extreme anti-abortion groups in the country protested abortion clinics in Colorado last weekend. Operation Rescue, the Kansas-based group prominent in anti-abortion activism in the 90s with alleged ties to multiple violent incidents, joined Colorado groups like Pro-Life Colorado and the Colorado chapter of American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs (AAPLOG) to protest outside of Planned Parenthood locations in Ft. Collins and Denver and RISE Collective in Boulder. The three-day campaign was part of an effort to raise awareness of the death of Lexi Arguello, who died last year after receiving abortion care at the Ft. Collins Planned Parenthood.
“Colorado has created a back-alley of unlicensed, unregulated abortion operations can even go so far as killing a patient with no repercussions,” claimed Sarah Neely, the chief operating officer of Operation Rescue, outside of the Ft. Collins Planned Parenthood during a press conference on Aug. 28. “It is unconscionable. Unacceptable. And we are gathered here today to call for justice.”
Claims that Colorado abortion clinics are unlicensed and unregulated have long been a talking point of anti-abortion activists like Dr. Catherine Wheeler of AAPLOG, who has advocated for legislation to include abortion facilities under the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s (CDPHE) regulatory authority. Abortion advocates consider such legislation an example of TRAP laws, or “targeted restrictions on abortion providers.” Planned Parenthood notes, “TRAP laws are costly, severe, and medically unnecessary requirements imposed on abortion providers and women’s health centers. Often pushed by anti-abortion politicians under the guise of ‘women’s health,’ the real aim of TRAP laws is to shut down abortion providers and make it more difficult for people to access abortion. Medical experts like the American Medical Association and American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists oppose TRAP laws because they don’t improve safety — just the opposite. TRAP laws hurt people by blocking access to safe medical care. In fact, TRAP laws have devastated access to safe, legal abortion in Texas and hurt access in other states that have imposed them.”
Efforts by Rep. Scott Bottoms (R-Colorado Springs) last year to introduce such legislation failed in committee.
“CDPHE oversight of facilities that perform surgical procedures protects patients from harm and medical error,” said Wheeler. “Regulation and inspection set standards for assuring that abortionists and staff are qualified, without patterns of medical negligence, that staff is trained and equipped to manage medical emergencies, that women are monitored appropriately in the 4th stage, that instruments are sterile, and that complications, infections, and medical errors are monitored and investigated to improve safety. None of this is required at Colorado late abortion facilities.”
While abortion facilities in Colorado are not regulated by CDPHE, the care provided by the doctors and nurses working in those facilities is regulated by DORA. “The healthcare Boards and Programs within the Division of Professions and Occupations (DPO) license and regulate individual healthcare providers,” said a spokesperson from DORA in an email. “The Division has no regulatory authority over the types of [abortion] facilities you mention; nor is there a specifically required profession or designation from DORA for individuals to work in one of these facilities. Individual healthcare providers are subject to specific statutory scope of practice criteria — which may include abortion — based on their respective practice acts.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2021 there were five deaths related to induced abortions nationally. In 1972 (the year before Roe v. Wade), a total of 24 women died from causes known to be associated with legal abortions, and 39 died as a result of known illegal abortions. Since 2020, approximately one million abortions are performed in the U.S. every year.
Operation Rescue was directly involved in researching the details of Arguello’s case. “We get a 911 call, we get a CAD transcript, we search ambulance records, and then we search autopsy records,” said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue. “That’s how we found the death of Lexi. And the coroner in this county, at least Larimer County, said they declined to release the unredacted autopsy result. They redacted the portion that stated that she died from an abortion. So I had to go to court. Troy Newman went to court, sued the coroner, sued the state of Colorado, to get an unredacted autopsy report. And the audacity of the coroner, the audacity of his attorney, argued that if women saw the unredacted autopsy report of Lexi that they would see that she died from an abortion and fewer women would get abortions.”
Newman’s involvement in anti-abortion activism hasn’t always involved records requests and legal filings. Operation Rescue pioneered the use of “truth trucks,” vehicles plastered with graphic images of dismembered fetuses parked near anti-abortion protests at clinics. Operation Rescue is perhaps best known for blockading abortion clinic entrances in the 90s.
“They started the FACE [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances] Act because of us,” said Newman. “In 1994, it was a direct result of Operation Rescue. We were the largest civil disobedience movement in the nation’s history. The civil rights movement had anywhere between 25,000 and 35,000 peaceful arrests. Operation Rescue, sitting in front of the doors of abortion clinics, had over 75,000 arrests. So we were the biggest peaceful civil disobedient movements in the nation’s history, and so the FACE act — and with a lot of help from Republican congressional members — made it illegal to block the doors of abortion clinics, and I’ve been convicted of that law.”
Newman isn’t the only Operation Rescue staffer with a legal history. Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue’s longtime senior vice president, spent two years in prison for a 1987 attempt to bomb an abortion clinic. Sullenger was also in contact with Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Wichita, Kansas abortion provider George Tiller in 2009. In 2010, Roeder told a journalist with Ms. Magazine that Sullenger was present at a lunch with Newman where they discussed “justifiable” homicide, and that Newman had given Roeder the autographed copy of his book just three months before Roeder killed Tiller when Roeder visited Operation Rescue headquarters.
Newman has consistently denied Roeder’s claims. “It’s just not true,” he told the Colorado Times Recorder. “I mean, if it was true in any way, they would have indicted me on some sort of conspiracy to commit murder. I mean do you think the feds at that time or the local prosecutors would have any hesitation to arrest me or investigate or charge me? No, they didn’t. So, on its face, it is B.S.”
Newman has expressed support for other individuals who have murdered abortion providers. In 2003, Newman and Sullenger, then director of the California Life Coalition, issued a joint press release in support of Paul Jennings Hill, who murdered Florida physician John Britton and Britton’s bodyguard in 1994.
“There are many examples where taking the life in defense of innocent human beings is legally justified and permissible under the law,” read Newman and Sullenger’s release. “Paul Hill should have been given the opportunity to defend himself with the defense of his choosing in a court of law. Because he was denied this right, the full truth and motivations behind Hill’s actions were kept hidden from the jury.”
Anti-abortion groups like White Rose Resistance have increasingly become a presence in front of Colorado abortion clinics like Boulder’s RISE Collective, raising fears of anti-abortion violence among providers and staff.
“This is Colorado,” said former Colorado Rep. Leslie Herod during an Aug. 27 press conference regarding Republican gubernatorial candidate Victor Marx’s anti-abortion rhetoric. “We know the impacts of this type of language has, particularly on our state. With the attack that happened in Colorado Springs at Planned Parenthood [in 2015], I happened to be in the same parking lot with my mother when it happened. We know how extremely dangerous this type of rhetoric is. And unfortunately, I hope we never see someone act on it, but we know that some people might be emboldened to do so with these words that they’re hearing from what someone might proclaim as a leader in our state. So it is extremely dangerous, and even if we go back before what happened in Planned Parenthood, we’ve seen across this country where doctors have been attacked and murdered simply for providing care for women and families, and it’s not okay.”
Newman is not deterred. “I can say with certainty, because I spent tens of thousands of hours in front of abortion clinics all over the country, just like this one, that they do close,” said Newman in front of RISE on Aug. 29. “Every abortion mill will close. It will. After 50 years, Warren Hern’s abortion mill closed, George Tiller’s abortion mill is closed, Leroy Carhart’s abortion mill closed. Our office, our national headquarters located in Wichita, Kansas, is in a closed abortion mill. One that we closed. Look if God can redeem buildings he can redeem hearts and lives and women and nations.”
