The Department of Homeland Security warned in a memo of potentially increased violence related to an upcoming Supreme Court ruling in the Mississippi case that could redefine Americans’ access to abortion.
“The amount of violent threats targeted to Supreme Court judges, members of Congress, other public officials, clergy, health officials and providers, and others involved in the abortion debate is likely to continue and escalate after the court’s issuance. official decision,” reads the DHS memo, dated May 13, according to CBS News.
CBS reported that the document, titled “Potential Threats to Public Safety in Response to the Abortion Debate,” has been circulated to state and local law enforcement nationwide.
The memo noted an increase in threats against reproductive health care facilities, and social media posts suggesting “burning down or storming the US Supreme Court and killing justices and their clerks, members of Congress, and lawful protestors.” “
The national debate over abortion resurfaced when a Supreme Court majority opinion overruled the court’s landmark 50-year-old Roe v. Wade decision, published by Politico earlier this month.
According to Politico, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court’s conservative majority, “Roe was wrong from the start.”
“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the elected representatives of the people,” Alito continued.
If the court’s official decision hinges on Alito’s draft, 26 states are set to ban the process altogether.
A decision is expected in the next two months. The case before the court is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which focuses on a 2018 Mississippi law that banned abortion after 15 weeks. Roe guarantees the right to an abortion until a fetus is deemed viable, which is estimated at 24 weeks.
The draft has provoked abortion-rights activists to protest the draft’s attack on the constitutional right. Protesters gathered outside the homes of Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts after the leak.
Justice Clarence Thomas condemned the protest, saying conservatives would never use such tactics.
“You never go to the Supreme Court justices’ homes when things don’t go our way,” Thomas told an audience in Dallas last week. “We didn’t throw temper tantrums. It’s up to us to always act fairly and not pay tit for like.”
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