Alice Marie Pence allegedly placed the threatening phone call the day after a hearing on mifepristone was announced.
A Florida woman has been arrested for allegedly phoning a death threat to a federal judge in Texas who suspended the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) approval of the abortion drug mifepristone earlier this year.
In April, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued a temporary nationwide pause on mifepristone (better known as RU-486), which works by blocking the natural hormone progesterone that developing babies require to survive and is followed by taking misoprostol within the next 48 hours to expel the baby’s remains from the uterus. That order has since been suspended while the Biden administration appeals the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On November 8, Reuters reported that Alice Marie Pence has been charged with threatening interstate communication and influencing a federal officer by threat for allegedly placing a phone call threatening to kill an Amarillo federal judge. The indictment does not identify Kacsmaryk by name, but he is the only federal judge in Amarillo. The indictment also reportedly says the threat was made in retaliation for something the judge did as part of his official duties – i.e., something in his rulings or written opinions.
What exactly that “something” was is not mentioned, and Kacsmaryk had not yet issued the anti-abortion ruling at the time of the threat, but WENY added that the call was made the day after news broke that Kacsmaryk had scheduled a “major” hearing on the abortion pill case.
“Ms. Pence is scheduled to make her initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Renee Harris Toliver on Wednesday, November 22, 2023,” the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a press release.
The case cuts against the common left-wing narrative that abortion-related violence is primarily or exclusively from the pro-life side. Across the nation, pro-abortion vandalism as well as worse acts, including arson, have been on the rise since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
According to the Washington Times, since May 2022 (when the Supreme Court’s intention to overturn Roe was first leaked), the federal government has charged more than 30 pro-lifers for allegedly violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, but only four pro-abortion activists, despite America experiencing 88 attacks on pregnancy centers and more than 200 on Catholic churches during that same period.
Meanwhile, evidence shows that abortion pills carry specific risks for the mothers who take them (on top of being lethal to their preborn children), especially when the standards for taking them continue to be relaxed.
A 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.”
Pro-lifers warn that with the Biden administration completely eliminating requirements that abortion pills be taken under any medical supervision or with medical support close by, those events are certain to increase.
“A November 2021 study by Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” Catholic University of America research associated Michael New wrote. “They analyzed state Medicaid data of over 400,000 abortions from 17 states that fund elective abortions through their Medicaid programs. They found that the rate of abortion-pill-related emergency-room visits increased over 500 percent from 2002 through 2015. The rate of emergency-room visits for surgical abortions also increased during the same time period, but by a much smaller margin.’”
Yet the White House and the abortion lobby have determined that, with Roe’s overturn last year allowing states to directly ban abortion for the first time in half a century, easy distribution of abortion pills across state lines is one of their most potent tactics for preserving abortion “access.
Editor’s note. This appeared at Life Site News and reposted with permission.
Daniel Miller is responsible for nearly all of National Right to Life News' political writing.
With the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, Daniel Miller developed a deep obsession with U.S. politics that has never let go of the political scientist. Whether it's the election of Joe Biden, the midterm elections in Congress, the abortion rights debate in the Supreme Court or the mudslinging in the primaries - Daniel Miller is happy to stay up late for you.
Daniel was born and raised in New York. After living in China, working for a news agency and another stint at a major news network, he now lives in Arizona with his two daughters.
