John Jefferson
Background: Gabriella Oropesa with alleged members of the abortion activist group Jane’s Revenge (Archdiocese of Miami/Catholic News Agency/YouTube). Insets: The aftermath of two of Gabriella Oropesa’s spray paint attacks (Heartbeat of Miami).
An abortion rights supporter in Florida is heading to prison for orchestrating “targeted” spray-paint attacks and making threats against “unwanted pregnancy” crisis centers, with federal prosecutors accusing her of being part of an “anti-life” activist group known as Jane’s Revenge.
Gabriella Oropesa, of Cooper City, was convicted last Thursday by a federal jury on charges of conspiracy to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate employees of pro-life pregnancy help centers “in the free exercise of the right to provide and seek to provide reproductive health services,” according to the Department of Justice.
Oropesa, who was 25 when she got hit with her federal charges in March, was accused of targeting pregnancy centers between May 2022 and July 2022 with three other individuals — Caleb Freestone, Amber Stewart-Smith and Annarella Rivera — who pleaded guilty to their participation in June.
“According to court documents and evidence presented at trial … Oropesa, Freestone, Smith-Stewart and Rivera engaged in a series of targeted attacks on pro-life pregnancy help centers in Florida,” prosecutors said Friday in a press release. “The defendants, in the dark of night and while wearing masks and dark clothing to obscure their identities, spray painted the facilities with threatening messages, including ‘YOUR TIME IS UP!!,’ ‘WE’RE COMING for U’ and ‘We are everywhere.’”
Authorities have described the facilities that were vandalized by Jane’s Revenge as reproductive health centers that provide and counsel pregnant women on alternatives to abortion. One of them, Heartbeat of Miami, describes itself as a nonprofit organization that is “passionate about providing help to women and couples with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy through the Gospel of Life and the message of hope.” Other facilities that were targeted included the Archdiocese of Miami’s “Respect Life” center in Hollywood, the Pregnancy Help Medical Clinics in Hialeah and LifeChoice Pregnancy Center in Winter Haven.
Speaking in a joint statement with other prosecutors on Friday, U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg noted how federal law is supposed to protect providers “who render reproductive health care and those who seek their services.”
“Threats of violence against pregnancy resource centers or those exercising their rights to care will not be tolerated,” Handberg said.
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act is in place to prevent people from having to “face threats and intimidation just for doing their job.”
“The Justice Department will continue to ensure access to the full spectrum of reproductive health services afforded to the public, whether those services include abortion or counseling on alternatives to abortion,” Clarke said.
Politicians and DOJ officials have publicly stated that “houses of worship” and “pro-life pregnancy centers” have been “under attack” across the country for years from members of Jane’s Revenge. Sen. Thomas Cotton, R-Ark., wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland in June 2022 to investigate the group as a “domestic terrorist organization,” according to DOJ records.
“The Family Research Council has compiled a list of more than 50 attacks against churches, pro-life pregnancy centers, and other pro-life groups in the past few weeks,” Cotton said. “A left-wing extremist group called ‘Jane’s Revenge’ has taken credit for many of these attacks, including fire bombings and grotesque acts of vandalism. The same group has now issued a letter declaring ‘open season’ on all so-called ‘anti-choice’ groups, and calls for terrorist attacks against these groups by anyone ‘with the urge to paint, to burn, to cut, [or] to jam.’”
In online blogs, Jane’s Revenge describes itself as being “not one group but many,” with reported incidents and alleged attacks being linked by the members, themselves, in Wisconsin, Colorado, Massachusetts, Washington state, Iowa, New York, Texas, Oregon and other states.
“You have seen that we are real, and that we are not merely pushing empty words,” the activists say in a June 2022 post. “Everyone with the urge to paint, to burn, to cut, to jam: now is the time. Go forth and manifest the things you wish to see. Stay safe, and practice your cursive.”
Oropesa, who faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for the conspiracy charge, is scheduled to be sentenced in March.
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