When the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v Wade, physicians and patients alike knew what was coming next and were certain we saw the writing on the wall. Unfortunately, we were not wrong about the impact of this decision and yet many of us did not predict the full spectrum of cascading downstream effects that would befall vulnerable women, babies, families, physicians, and society at large when the Supreme Court erased 50 years of legal precedent.

Last week, a markup of bills in Congress (which indicates bills that may come to a vote on the floor) revealed that Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and fellow anti-abortion politicians may now be one step closer to removing a critical 30-year safety net that has protected patients and physicians in the United States from intimidation and force.   Rep Roy (R-TX) has introduced legislation to repeal the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act)

The FACE Act is a federal law that prohibits actions that intentionally injure, intimidate, or interfere with individuals' ability to access reproductive healthcare. The decades-old law allows for civil and criminal penalties against people and groups convicted of inflicting unlawful, unprovoked, intentional intimidation and violence on patients, their families, patient escorts, physicians, and clinic staff.

The FACE Act does not legislate regarding medical procedures, states' rights, or Americans' lawful choices. 

It simply says you cannot harass, stalk, and murder innocent people on the street.

On its face, this law is so straightforward and morally obvious that it seems non-controversial. But the anti-choice movement has not been content to revoke Roe v Wade, nor has it been satisfied to chip away at Women's Rights state-by-state post-Dobbs, with maneuvers including enactment of trigger laws and assaults on evidence-based FDA-approved prescription regulations. 

Since Dobbs, energized anti-choice activists and legislators continue to "flood the zone" with actions big and small. All are designed to remove even basic protections against violence in states where Roe continues to be upheld. 

Many Americans of reproductive age today, and indeed many who have now passed their child-bearing years, are too young to remember life in this country before Roe v Wade, though they are now inheriting the generational trauma of their mothers and grandmothers as they live through the post-Dobbs era. Similarly, millions of Americans may not recall the escalating terror and violence that led Representative Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to introduce legislation that led to the enactment of the FACE Act in 1994. 

From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, organizations such as the National Abortion Federation (NAF) tracked a rising tide of murders, attempted murders, death threats, assault and battery, and kidnappings committed against abortion providers. Property crimes, including bombings, bomb threats, arson, trespassing, and vandalism, accompanied this terrorism. 

Many organizations and individual perpetrators were emboldened to commit this violence, and before the FACE Act, no federal protection existed to force states and enable attorneys to investigate and prosecute these crimes. 

One notorious anti-abortion group self-titled and anointed the "Army of God" bombed and set fire to over one hundred clinics before 1994 and published a tactical guide to arson, chemical attacks, invasions, and bombing to train its members to intimidate, harm, and murder physicians and patients. 

In 1993, the very year the guidebook was discovered buried in the yard of an Army of God terrorist, Shelley Shannon, Shannon was later found guilty of the attempted murder of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas, and 1000 miles away in Florida, Dr. David Gunn was assassinated outside the clinic where he worked.  

Dr. Tiller, whose motto was "Trust Women," survived, but so did the anti-abortion groups, and Dr. Tiller was fatally shot in 2009, murdered at his church as he served as an usher for the funeral of a fellow parishioner. 

The murder of Dr. David Gunn and the attempted murder of Dr. Tiller in the 1990s, along with other senseless killings and acts of violence, seemed to signify a cultural tipping point. Following decades of domestic terrorism committed by anti-abortion extremists, President Bill Clinton signed the FACE Act into law in 1994. Since then, the legislation has been credited with curbing some of the violence and promoting proper investigation and prosecution of these acts, particularly in jurisdictions where criminal law enforcement in such attacks was blatantly lenient.

It is no coincidence that the Army of God of the 1980s and '90s appeared resurrected by a cultural shift during the first Trump Administration. When Dobbs fell and Trump returned to office, the new Justice Department moved to weaken enforcement of provisions in the FACE Act, dropping pending cases as Trump pardoned 23 people convicted under the law.

As international conflict and devastation abound in 2025, conflict and devastation at home are quietly escalating. Fifty years of Women's Rights were stripped away: Doctors are suffering devastating consequences, and women and babies are dying. If the FACE Act is indeed repealed, 30 years of protection against domestic terrorism will undoubtedly lead to a resurgence in the overt and premedicated intimidation, violence, and murder of patients and abortion providers. 

Who can say what will happen next? 

Tell Congress to vote no on repealing the FACE Act so you can face your children and yourself in the mirror.