Catholic and anti-abortion groups are calling on the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute attacks on churches, pregnancy resource centers, and Supreme Court Justices.
The calls come amid a rash of attacks from abortion activists lashing out after a leaked draft Supreme Court decision forecasted a potential overruling of Roe v. Wade.
"We call on you to publicly condemn these unlawful attacks; to commit to vigorous efforts to prevent them, and to investigate and prosecute them; and to pro actively engage with the affected faith communities to ensure their concerns and security needs are being met, " CatholicVote, SBA Pro-Life America, The Heritage Foundation, and Students for Life Action wrote in a joint letter to the Justice Department on Wednesday, according to Axios.
There have been 24 attacks on pregnancy resource centers and anti-abortion groups since the leak, according to CatholicVote. Since 2020, there have been 140 attacks on Catholic Churches, according to CatholicVote's tracker.
The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security are monitoring intelligence in anticipation of violence when the Supreme Court decision on a Mississippi abortion law is delivered by the end of this session in June.
A DHS memo outlined the warnings of potential political violence, riots, and protests, Axios reported.
"We've been urging the Department of Justice to act for months and regrettably the situation has grown worse," CatholicVote President Brian Burch told Axios. "The attorney general should be apolitical when it comes to political violence. There is no excuse for what appears to be calculated inaction."
CatholicVote received a DOJ response from a December 2021 letter, where the DOJ promised a "15-day review to ensure that all appropriate resources are being deployed to protect houses of worship."
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta noted the DOJ has "successfully pursued and prosecuted a number of religiously motivated hate crimes in recent years."
When the leaked draft decision came out in early May, the DOJ preemptively mailed a duplicate of that response to CatholicVote, Axios reported.