Anti-Abortion Terrorist Thinks Dobbs Ruling Should Set Him Free

Anti-Abortion Terrorist Thinks Dobbs Ruling Should Set Him Free
Robyn Pennacchia
June 23, 2023 02:50 PM
Anti-Abortion Terrorist Thinks Dobbs Ruling Should Set Him Free

Domestic terrorist James Charles Kopp has filed court papers asking that his federal convictions be overturned on the grounds of the United States Supreme Court determining in the 2022 Dobbs decision that Americans have no constitutional right to abortion — which he seems to believe gave him the right to kill an abortion provider.

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In 1998, Kopp, a member of a radical anti-abortion group called the Lambs of Christ (or, alternately, Victim Souls of the Unborn Christ-Child), shot and killed Dr. Barnett Slepian in a sniper attack in his home near Buffalo, New York. Kopp was convicted in 1993 on state charges of second degree murder and on federal charges of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence and of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) resulting in death. "FACE was intended to protect a 'right' to abortion that thus never existed, and, as such, the fate of FACE attaches to and follows perfectly the fate of Roe," Kopp wrote in the court papers, as per the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. "Since Roe is now overturned FACE also is now gone and never existed."

The FACE Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1994 following several years' worth of anti-abortion terrorism on US clinics, makes it illegal when anyone:

(1) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services;

(2) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship; or

(3) intentionally damages or destroys the property of a facility, or attempts to do so, because such facility provides reproductive health services, or intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship.


Dobbs has had no impact on the legality of FACE, and it is hard to see how it would.

Kopp also alleges, in these court papers, that he was denied the ability to claim in court that he killed Slepian in defense of "the humanity of womb children." He's not the first anti-abortion radical to assert that he should be able to plead "defense of others" in court, though this defense has yet to be successful. It is highly unlikely that this nonsense will get any kind of hearing, though the fact that a domestic terrorist like Kopp is looking at that ruling and thinking "Killing abortion providers is definitely legal now" is certainly frightening. He's not alone, either.
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Barnett Slepian, by the way, is likely not the only abortion provider that Kopp shot, though he is the only fatality; Kopp is suspected of four other sniper attacks on abortion providers in their homes in southern Canada and in Rochester, New York. These are largely referred to as the Remembrance Day shootings, as they all took place around November 11, which Canadian anti-abortion radicals celebrate as Remembrance Day for the Unborn. Dr. David Gandell, the Rochester abortion provider he was suspected of shooting in 1997, passed away in 2021, a year before Roe was overturned. He was remembered fondly by the many people he helped.