The group’s second statement, published May 30, calls for activism and the creation of “autonomously organized self-defense networks” The group tends to be critical of more mainstream abortion activists and their “demure little rallies for freedom.”
“We cannot sit idly by anymore while our anger is yet again channeled into Democratic party fundraisers and peace parades with the police.”
Jane’s Revenge called for a “Night of Rage” on the day the final Supreme Court decision on abortion is issued at 8 p.m., calling this a “general guideline” to be adapted for local conditions.
The statement claimed inspiration from “reproductive liberation” autonomous organization movements in Argentina, Mexico, and Poland.
Contending that abortion foes “work to oppress us,” the group's May 30 statement repeated another slogan used to vandalize pro-life groups and churches: “If abortion isn’t safe, you aren’t either. We are everywhere.”
Kyle Shideler, a senior analyst for the Homeland Security and Terrorism at the Center for Security Policy, said militant abortion groups like Jane’s Revenge “organize in local cells” and its claimed members have “likely voluntarily self-identified themselves as Jane’s Revenge.”
“It is unlikely that there is a hierarchy or that they receive orders, although they may communicate from cell to cell or use social media or in other ways,” he told the EWTN news show “The World Over” on June 9.
According to Shideler, the government does not treat anarchist organizations as criminal conspiracies, but as “a bunch of looney individuals operating separately.”
In his view, this is the wrong approach.
“Although they are cellular in structure they are very organized and they need to be treated as an organization,” he said.
What has Jane’s Revenge done?
(Story continues below)
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The first crime invoking “Jane” appears to have taken place early in the morning of May 8, Mother’s Day, when the Madison, Wisconsin headquarters of Wisconsin Family Action was targeted by arson and vandalism. The vandalism involved an anarchist symbol, an anti-police slogan, and the phrase “if abortions aren’t safe, you aren’t safe either.”
Other incidents followed.
On the night of May 13, a vandal spray-painted slogans, including the words “Jane’s Revenge,” on the walls of the Alpha Pregnancy Center in Reisterstown, Maryland.
On May 22, St. Michael Parish in Olympia was vandalized with the words “Abort the church” spray-painted on a wall. Several other non-Catholic churches were targeted by vandals. In a message submitted anonymously to Puget Sound Anarchists, the Bo Brown Memorial Cell of Jane’s Revenge claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The group said it was motivated by the churches’ ties to crisis pregnancy centers, which it characterized as “religious fake clinics that manipulate mostly poor people into having and keeping children they don’t want or aren’t ready for and marrying whomever impregnated them whether or not that relationship is healthy or safe.” It characterized both the Catholic Church and the LDS / Mormon church as “patriarchal sex abuse cults.”
The group’s “cell” is named for a local anarchist who was a member of the George Jackson Brigade, a self-styled revolutionary group that committed several bank robberies and multiple pipe bombings in Washington State and Oregon in the 1970s.