FioRito voiced concern that questionable criticism of pregnancy centers from political leaders has helped drive violence.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, speaking in downtown Boston on June 29, claimed that the centers are “deceptive outfits” that unethically seek to persuade women not to seek abortions. She lamented that there are three pregnancy centers for every abortion clinic, and she has introduced federal legislation to address what she says are their deceptive practices.
Two Worcester pregnancy centers subsequently faced vandalism from perpetrators who appeared to self-identify with Jane’s Revenge, a purported group which has posted internet threats encouraging vandalism.
Some of this vandalism has come with “very explicit threats,” FioRito said.
“‘If abortion isn’t safe, neither are you’, you can’t interpret that in any way other than a direct threat,” she said, quoting a phrase popular among vandals.
FioRito said many Catholic or pro-life organizations have written to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to ask his help in the protecting churches and pro-life pregnancy centers.
“As Catholics the way we start everything is with prayer,” she said. Catholics who feel moved to do so should write to Garland, President Joe Biden, and their state attorney general in order “to say this is not acceptable,” she suggested.
“This is not acceptable and there has not been a loud enough condemnation of this kind of behavior here,” she said.
“We can’t live in a free society, if places that are giving out diapers to poor pregnant women are being vandalized and bombed. What on earth is going on here?” FioRito asked. “I think that we have to show a little bit right of righteous indignation. I think that is absolutely called for under the circumstances.”
FioRito, who has served on the board of a pregnancy center in the Chicago area for more than 20 years, worries that people will be hurt.
“We have two maternity homes where we have moms with little babies or moms who are pregnant are living. If someone throws a Molotov cocktail like happened in Nashville, or, you know, firebombs the center like it happened in Buffalo, our moms and children could be hurt,” she said.
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She found it “very, very troubling” that women “should be dissuaded from going to a place where they're going to get alternatives that they themselves are freely seeking.”
According to FioRito, people who work in pregnancy centers as “the nicest people you'll ever meet in the entire world” who “tend not to be very political people at all.”
“They are just really more interested in direct service to women and children,” she said. Even though pro-life legal organizations or state legislators prompted the Dobbs decision, these workers are “taking the brunt of this anger.”
“It's just completely unacceptable behavior, and I can’t imagine that any person of goodwill would condone this sort of menacing that's being done to the pregnancy centers.”
FioRito also noted the anti-Catholic sentiment in the behavior of Illinois Sen. Sara Feigenholtz, a Chicago Democrat who posted to Facebook a picture of a caricature of a bishop holding a gun to the head of a pregnant Statue of Liberty.
“She had to be sort of forced to apologize, but it was a non-apology apology, sort of thing, and she is still sitting in her office,” said FioRito. “The Archdiocese of Chicago put out a very strong statement, as did the Metropolitan Council of Churches … yet the state Senate President, who is a Catholic, said nothing publicly and didn’t reprimand her.”