Abortion providers faced violent threats and sustained harassment in 2025, the same year President Donald Trump pardoned nearly two dozen anti-abortion protesters and his Justice Department pledged to roll back similar prosecutions in the future, according to a new report compiled by a national association of abortion providers shared first with MS NOW.
The annual survey from the National Abortion Federation aggregates self-reported incidents of harassment and violence from more than 400 members, which include Planned Parenthood locations, physicians, women’s health clinics and hospitals across the country.
Of more than 300 facilities and workers who responded to the survey, about 200 reported incidents of violence or harassment in 2025, a number that does not include peaceful protests outside clinics. More than 60 facilities reported receiving death threats or threats of harm, such as attempted break-ins or threats against providers, and 10 of those reported multiple threats, according to NAF. More incidents were reported in 2025 than in 2024, but the percentage of facilities responding to the survey also increased significantly, so it is unclear whether the higher numbers reflect more incidents, more thorough reporting or a combination of the two.
The findings, released Tuesday, suggest that the Trump administration played an outsize role in driving the threats by prioritizing the protection of anti-abortion protesters while rolling back protections for providers and patients, said Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the NAF, in an interview with MS NOW.
Fonteno said she believes the administration “has genuinely emboldened people,” adding, “Provider safety protections are being actively weakened.”
Days into his second term, Trump pardoned 23 people convicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, also known as the FACE Act, which former President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994 following mounting violence targeting abortion providers, including the murders of physicians. At least three of the people Trump pardoned have since been rearrested on multiple occasions for participating in clinic blockades, as MS NOW previously reported.
Trump’s Department of Justice suggested in a report released last month that the Biden administration targeted those protesters for prosecution due to their religious beliefs, as MS NOW reported. The department fired multiple prosecutors involved in bringing those cases. The DOJ also announced during the first week of Trump’s second term that it would roll back most abortion-related FACE Act prosecutions and civil actions.
Amanda Kifferly, director of security and vice president for abortion access at the Delaware County Women’s Center in Upland, Pennsylvania, saw the effects of the administration’s actions firsthand last year: Two people pardoned by Trump were among a half-dozen who allegedly set false appointments at the clinic, then stormed the building and refused to leave, according to the NAF report and criminal complaints obtained by MS NOW. The complaints note that three of the participants poured “an unknown liquid and salt-like substance” around the facility. All patients who were scheduled that day were nonetheless able to receive abortions, Kifferly said, and the protesters were arrested and charged with defiant trespass. The defendants ultimately pleaded no contest, according to a spokesperson for the Delaware County district attorney’s office.
But some providers still feel as though they are under siege.
“We live daily with the discomfort that they will return,” Kifferly said of the protesters, adding that staff at her facility no longer feel they can rely on officials for justice or protection.
Responding clinics also reported a half-dozen blockades — physical, and in some states illegal, obstructions by anti-abortion demonstrators aimed at preventing staff and patients from accessing care. The blockades occurred at abortion clinics across Wisconsin, Kansas, Tennessee and Texas, according to NAF. That surge came after Randall Terry, who pioneered mass clinic blockades in the 1980s and 1990s, told MS NOW he hopes to revive a nationwide campaign of physical confrontations at abortion clinics in light of the Trump administration’s pledge not to prosecute FACE Act violations.
Recommended
Fonteno said she is taking Terry’s plans seriously.
“We could absolutely see a return to the pre-FACE era of large scale blockades,” she said.
As the threats persist nationally, healthcare clinics are fighting to stay open. A dozen abortion clinics closed between March 2024 and the end of 2025, according to a February report released from the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research and policy organization.
Meanwhile, medication abortions prescribed through telehealth are surging. As the abortion provisions change, with patients traveling further for in-person care or taking abortion pills at home, anti-abortion protesters are also adapting: Anecdotal evidence from providers featured in the NAF report suggests an increase in digital harassment, in which abortion opponents threaten providers online and flood clinics’ phone lines and inboxes to prevent patients from making appointments.
“To see how there was that surge of digital harassment and that providers are carrying this experience home with them is really concerning,” Fonteno said.
Late last year in Kansas, abortion opponents overloaded the phone lines of Trust Women, a clinic in Wichita, with thousands of automated messages on two separate days in September and December, according to the NAF report. In Colorado last spring, after Boulder Valley Health Center announced a youth sex education program, the facility fielded more than 65,000 calls, emails and social media messages after they were targeted by prominent right-wing online commentators, including Libs of TikTok. The reproductive healthcare clinic received messages and phone calls for more than a month, while in-person anti-abortion demonstrations amassed outside, according to Christie Burkhart, director of facilities and infrastructure operations.
The sex education program was ultimately canceled due to safety concerns, Burkhart said. But abortion services have continued despite ongoing protests.
“Abortion providers and abortion staff are the most resilient folks I’ve ever worked with,” she told MS NOW. “And we’re not going away anytime soon.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.