Written by State Rep. Lindsay Powell
“I can tell you which protesters will arrive at which times on Saturday, and where they’ll set up to intimidate patients,” a security guard at Allegheny Reproductive Health Center told me, gesturing toward the clinic’s front window. “Procedure days are by far the most intense – physically and emotionally.”
I heard that on a chilly morning in March 2025, as my team and I toured one of the only comprehensive reproductive health care clinics in Western Pennsylvania. Known affectionately by staff as the “mom-and-pop abortion shop,” Allegheny Reproductive Health Center has served our region since 1975, providing abortion care, contraception, infertility treatment and gender-affirming care with empathy, dignity and respect.
Inside the clinic, patients are met with warmth and professionalism. However, outside its doors, they are met with vitriol and hostility.
On any given day, protesters line the sidewalk just beyond the clinic’s property line. Some are longtime Pittsburgh residents. Others travel from out of state. All are required to stay at least 15 feet from the entrance under Pittsburgh’s clinic buffer zone ordinance, one of only two such continuously enforced laws remaining in Pennsylvania. These buffer zones were enacted to prevent people from physically blocking clinic entrances and intimidating patients, but now they are no longer enough.
Across the commonwealth, protesters are escalating beyond shouting and harassment into coordinated acts of intimidation, obstruction and violence. In July 2025, six anti-abortion extremists gained access to the Delaware County Women’s Center by registering as patients. Once inside, they opened the doors to additional protesters and spread unidentified powder and liquid throughout the facility, forcing it to shut down and denying patients the care that many had traveled so far to receive.
Clinic staff and volunteers are also at risk. In Philadelphia in 2021, an extremist physically assaulted a volunteer escort at Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania – twice. A decade earlier in Pittsburgh, escorts at Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania were attacked while accompanying a patient into the Liberty Avenue clinic.
These are not peaceful protests, but rather targeted acts of intimidation designed to prevent people from accessing lawful health care. What’s more, these attacks have been occurring for decades, which is why Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) in 1994. The federal FACE Act makes it illegal to use force, threats, obstruction or property damage to interfere with someone seeking or providing reproductive health care. After it passed, violence at clinics declined significantly.
But today, the federal law is failing to protect Pennsylvanians.
As a direct result of Trump administration actions, enforcement of the FACE Act has weakened; earlier this year, nearly 50 FACE Act violators were pardoned at the federal level. Among them were individuals connected to the Delaware County clinic invasion. When laws are not enforced – and when violators are rewarded – extremists are emboldened.
In response, my office began working with the Women’s Law Project in 2024 to explore what Pennsylvania could do to fill this dangerous gap. The answer became clear: our commonwealth needs its own Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances law.
Seventeen states already have protections on the books. California and New York have state-level FACE Acts. Others rely on criminal trespass and obstruction statutes. Connecticut has taken a particularly effective approach by framing clinic-access protections as anti-violence laws that safeguard equal rights.
Pennsylvania must do the same.
This issue is not hypothetical. In December 2025, nearly 25 protesters gathered to block access to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Memphis – a facility that does not even provide abortion services. The protest was organized by groups that openly train people to “siege” clinics. One of them, Rescue Resurrection, is a rebranding of Operation Rescue, the group whose violent tactics in the 1980s and 1990s led directly to the passage of the federal FACE Act.
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Their leader, Randall Terry, has been explicit about exploiting weak enforcement. “We have a window now,” he said ahead of the December Memphis blockade. “Direct action … disrupt, disrupt, disrupt.”
When people openly brag about violating the law, it is time for lawmakers to respond. A Pennsylvania FACE Act would not limit speech or religious belief – people will always have the right to protest. What they do not have is the right to threaten, harass or physically block their neighbors from receiving health care.
Let’s also be clear about what is truly at stake: reproductive health care facilities offer cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, prenatal care, contraception and routine gynecological services. They are not “abortion mills” as these disruptive protestors argue – they are clinics providing lifesaving care.
A state version of the FACE Act is not a pro-abortion bill, but rather an anti-violence bill. This legislation is about public safety, bodily autonomy and ensuring that health care decisions remain between patients and providers – not mobs outside clinic doors.
Our residents deserve safe, unobstructed access to care. Pennsylvania can and must act now.
State Rep. Lindsay Powell, a Democrat from Allegheny County, represents the 21st District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, which includes Reserve and Shaler Townships, Etna, Millvale and parts of Pittsburgh.
