Inside an 80s Extremist Anti-Abortion Group’s New Strategy
'Operation Rescue' leader opens training facility in Memphis
This article, written by Rachel Wells, is part of a series in partnership with TN Repro News.
An extremist anti-abortion movement, ‘Rescue Resurrection,’ has found a new home in a former church complex in Memphis, but its goals far extend beyond the state’s borders. Randall Terry, the Founder of ‘Operation Rescue,’—a movement in the 80s and 90s that blocked clinics and targeted patients and providers—is leading its revival.
The group was so disruptive and dangerous that, in 1994, Bill Clinton signed the FACE Act into law to ensure that patients and providers could safely enter clinics to receive healthcare. Earlier this year, two dozen anti-abortion protestors federally charged with violating the FACE Act were pardoned by President Trump. (One of whom is plotting to take down Tennessee’s contraception and IVF protections.)
Now, Randall and his cohorts see this moment as a unique window of opportunity: if President Trump won’t enforce the FACE Act, it’s time to ramp up harassment at clinics, but this time, they’ve also set up a novel anti-abortion training center.
The new suburb complex will recruit and train anti-abortion activists from across the country on how to physically disrupt access, create viral content, run for office, and then send them back to their cities and states to carry out what they’ve learned. It’s an incredibly advanced and frankly, brilliant system that the pro-abortion movement can learn a lot from. The center is extreme in its mission—even encouraging folks to come with a sleeping bag and pillow and sleep right on the carpet. Scarier yet, people are.
We can not accept the new movement’s iteration, especially now.
Expanded Targets Endanger Patients
Since Dobbs, the rate of abortion in America has increased. You’ve probably heard this before: it’s due to easy access to abortion telehealth. It’s legal to receive abortion pills through the mail in every single state, despite some states’ laws trying to confuse people about this. Yes, some states have made “telemedicine abortion” illegal, but those laws apply to the physicians sending the pills, not the person receiving them.
Now that many states have made in-person abortion illegal, those who need surgical abortions are fleeing to haven states, and fewer abortions are actually happening inside clinics. A big question I had when I saw ‘Rescue Resurrection’ launching in person, in Tennessee, was ‘Why here?’ Abortion is illegal in Tennessee. They are not doing abortions at the Memphis Planned Parenthood, nor anywhere else in the state.
So, what’s the deal? It’s a bold point: you can and should harass patients everywhere. Blue state, red state? It doesn’t matter. You can make a difference wherever you are.
Horrifying.
They’re creating a malleable and replicable blueprint by teaching both red-state and blue-state anti-abortion folks not just to disrupt clinic entrances, but pharmacy entrances, opposing politicians’ homes, and any organizations they interpret as ‘trafficking’, aka helping people get out of restrictive states to get the healthcare.
Here is their three-point approach to disrupting abortion access in 2026.
1. Disrupt Neighborhood Retail Pharmacies
According to a source who was present, Randall specifically encouraged civil disobedience at places like CVS. As a decades-long devotee to the anti-abortion movement, I’m sure he knows they aren’t doing surgical abortions at retail pharmacies, so what he’s saying is: go to anyplace you think is abortion-adjacent.
Is the CVS in your state allowed to prescribe abortion pills? No? Disrupt anyway.
Is the CVS in your state allowed to disseminate abortion pills? No? Disrupt anyway.
Are the stocked OTC morning-after pills an abortifacient? No? Disrupt anyway.
To Randall, it doesn’t matter what the facts, laws, or reality are; he says disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. The implications are something no state is ready for—let alone a nation divided. Can you imagine folks not able to pick up their medications for high cholesterol, blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, seizures, or kids and babies unable to get the antibiotics they need for an extremely high and dangerous fever because a group of anti-abortion extremists has closed down the entrance to the local CVS?
The ramnications of sending out trained extremists in this way are absolutely mind-boggling. As my reporting partner witnessed, the ferocity with which these activists are training is biblical in its mission-like intensity. These disruptions are holy work.
They claim they want to save babies from being aborted, but what happens when the GOP fully convinces them that Plan B and birth control are also abortion? Pharmacy safety and entrances are going to be as difficult to enter as abortion clinics in the 80s.
Will providers of sexual health education become targets? Will parents in “liberal” neighborhoods? We’re seeing private enforcement mechanisms in Texas. How far will Texas and other red states go to extend those loopholes to other repro healthcare? Will the enforcement enter the areas that MAHA and Robert F. Kennedy, JR. are after?
There’s no end. It’s why we need to be honest now about what the decades to come will look like. We can’t say it’s too extreme; it’s an established playbook. It’s occurring.
2. Radically Position at Politicians’ Residences
‘Rescue Resurrection’ activists also plan to target the homes of opposition politicians, for example, the Governor’s Mansions, but what else might fit into the category? In the 80s, sites of political debates were targets, but we’re in a different place in 2025.
Political violence is peaking, and there have been multiple assassinations and attempts on politicians in the last year. This year, Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were shot and killed in their homes, someone set Josh Shapiro’s home on fire, and someone assassinated Charlie Kirk in public. The divisions have only deepened since, and what’s in the ravines are not rivers of peace.
In 2025, the term “civil disobedience” has come to mean cover for resulting violence. The moral imperative of these activists unquestionably condones extreme behavior. They can preach that their peaceful approach is rooted in the civil rights movement, but looking back, was the fight for civil rights peaceful despite its best efforts?
It’s not the time to assume this movement will resurrect itself in a less radical way than it had in the 80s and 90s, especially since the President has given them carte blanche to break federal law with no consequences. Even if Democrats do well in the midterms, nothing will stop the radicalization of every person who joins this training.
3. Target Non-Abortion Providing Health Clinics
These activists see any support, as minuscule as giving a phone number to an out-of-state clinic or transportation coordination, as a criminal act to be stopped at all costs.
It’s not illegal, of course, to leave a restricted state for an abortion. Still, both Randall and his crew are promoting it as such, and that itself will have dire consequences for clinics all across the country, regardless of their direct involvement on the ground at their physical clinic locations. Most coordination is via the Internet and teleconsults. Patients are not walking into clinics to ask a singular question, much like you wouldn’t walk into your primary healthcare provider’s office to ask about a fever.
“Rescue Resurrection,” as they’re temporarily calling themselves until they find a catchier name, is using an old playbook but is primarily learning on the job. What might come of it could look like patient tracking, schedule stalking, or provider monitoring. We have to anticipate an evolution of the movement we once knew.
The surveillance systems are already in place. License plate readers are already being used to track patients; warrants are out for blue state providers; private enforcement mechanisms are encouraging citizens to watch and report on neighbors for cash. And regionally, PPSE and other Midwest Planned Parenthoods have been taken over by anti-abortion folks from the inside out. All repro orgs need to increase their funding and staffing for expanded security measures right now, not tomorrow or next month.
We have to get ahead of the years to come. We can’t play catch-up anymore. We won’t win back our rights without blue-and-red state coordination. We won’t win our rights back without collaboration between national and indie clinics. And we certainly won’t win back our rights if we’re busy infighting over basic things like safety and security.
Bring out the sleeping bags.
It’s time to radicalize.
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