As law enforcement in Minnesota searched desperately for the man who shot two members of the state legislature and their spouses on Saturday, Amy Hagstrom Miller found out the shooter was carrying a target list that included abortion providers and advocates.
The president and founder of Whole Woman’s Health didn’t know if the national organization’s Minnesota abortion clinic in Bloomington, just 30 minutes south of where police last saw the shooter, was on the list. She hadn’t heard anything from law enforcement and pieced together what was happening from news reports and the rapidly churning rumor mill.
“I immediately freaked out because [the Bloomington clinic] was open at the time, and we were actively seeing patients. My staff and doctor and patients were on site,” Hagstrom Miller recalled to HuffPost on Monday.
“Whole Woman’s Health is very well known,” she added. “We had to operate from the assumption that we were listed or that we could be.”
Before the suspect was ultimately arrested, abortion clinic workers and advocates around the state endured a tense and stressful 36 hours. Providers and staff at the state’s 13 abortion clinics had no idea if they were next.
She alerted her staff and provider, who luckily only had two or three patients left to see that day. She called the local police department and asked them to come to the clinic and escort the staff to their cars. She created a phone tree with workers to make sure everyone arrived home safely. And then they waited.
“This was an act of targeted political violence,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) said during a Saturday press briefing.
The suspect impersonated a police officer and drove to the home of state Sen. John Hoffman (D) and Yvette Hoffman, where he shot the couple multiple times, leaving them in critical condition. He also shot and killed state Rep. Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband, Mark Hortman. All of the lawmakers targeted by the shooter were Democrats, including the list of 45 state and federal officials who were also on the shooter’s list, acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson later confirmed.
“This was an act of targeted political violence.”
- Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D)
Minnesota has always been a pro-choice state, but it became a haven for abortion care after federal protections fell in 2022 and many neighboring states enacted abortion bans. Law enforcement officials said early on in their search that the names of abortion providers and advocates, as well as some information about Planned Parenthood health centers, were included on the suspect’s list.
After a statewide manhunt, the suspected shooter was apprehended and identified as Vance Boelter — a Minnesota native who had worked in funeral homes, and had also worked as a pastor preaching against abortion.
Hagstrom Miller’s phone was still buzzing nonstop Saturday afternoon as her network of reproductive health contacts attempted to piece together who knew what. She reached out to everyone she knew in the state working in abortion care to warn them that they could be a target.
The Bloomington clinic opened in 2012, but Whole Woman’s Health has had a presence in the Twin Cities area since the 1970s. Hagstrom Miller started her career in abortion care there in the late 1980s and has experienced decades of anti-abortion violence, ranging from harassment to protesters blocking her clinic entrances to arson attacks. Still, this shook her.
“It’s pretty sobering that something like this happened with an anti-abortion activist in Minnesota, in a place where abortion is protected and where the vast majority of people believe people should have access to safe abortion in their community,” Hagstrom Miller said.
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) found out she was on the shooter’s hit list from a text message from Walz early Saturday morning. The senator took extra security precautions, but told HuffPost she was worried about abortion providers and advocates who may be targeted.
“These are individuals that don’t have any additional personal security or way to keep themselves safe,” said Smith, who worked at Planned Parenthood before becoming a senator. She added that she knows “many of them feel quite exposed” after a right-wing news outlet published a list of names purported to be on the shooter’s hit list.
Four hours north of Hagstrom Miller’s clinic, near the North and South Dakota borders, Tammi Kromenaker was fielding calls from worried friends and family, who were making sure she was safe. She felt some relief knowing her abortion clinic, the Red River Women’s Clinic, was closed that day, and her staff and providers were not on site. Kromenaker told everyone to stay home if they could; she and her husband did the same.
She described a chaotic and tense day as information trickled in and rumors swirled.
“When they found the second vehicle, it was like, ‘OK, has he got an accomplice? A co-conspirator?’ How did that second vehicle get there? All the scenarios just started running through my mind.”
Red River Women’s Clinic is not near the Twin Cities but it is on the way to the Canadian border. When news came out that the suspect fled the scene and abandoned his car, Kromenaker heard that border crossing authorities were alerted that he was coming their way. What if he stops here? she thought.
On the other side of the state, in Duluth, executive director of We Health abortion clinic Paulina Briggs found herself thinking the same thing. “There was a possibility of perhaps an opportunistic attack,” Briggs, who had heard the same rumor about the suspect fleeing to Canada, told HuffPost.
Briggs, who uses she/they pronouns, worked well into Sunday night enhancing security around their clinic. They told staff to take more precautions and vet anyone who presented themselves as law enforcement.
Ruth Richardson, Planned Parenthood’s regional president, said in a statement over the weekend that the organization was working with law enforcement to increase security at their clinics. Richardson worked closely with Hortman when the state lawmaker was Speaker of the Minnesota House, together passing a gun control law and the state’s paid family leave act.
“It’s been difficult to process the loss of Melissa and Mark, while also thinking about not only personal safety for myself and for my family but also thinking about our patients and the employees that do this work every single day,” Richardson told CBS News Minnesota.
Police announced they would reach out to any individual or health clinic on the suspect’s list. By Sunday night, law enforcement had not contacted any of the three abortion clinics HuffPost spoke with.
Eventually, they heard through the grapevine that everyone who was on the list had already been contacted. It was a relief, but somewhat unnerving since they never heard from an official source that they were not on the target list.
The threat of violence is unfortunately “not totally unfamiliar territory” for abortion clinics, Briggs, from We Health clinic, said.
“It’s always in the back of our minds that something like this could happen, but with it being so close to home it was hectic and stressful,” she said.
There’s a long history of violence and harassment against abortion providers and clinics in the U.S. Since Roe v. Wade fell in 2022, that violence has escalated: There was a 538% increase in people obstructing clinic entrances, a 913% increase in stalking of clinic staff and a 133% increase in bomb threats, according to a National Abortion Federation report.
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, also known as the FACE Act, was enacted in 1994 to curb this type of violence. The federal law makes it a crime to use force or the threat of force to injure, intimidate or block any person trying to provide or access reproductive health care services.
Despite the FACE Act being arguably more important than ever in a post-Roe world, Congressional Republicans are working to repeal the law, which also protects fertility clinics, anti-abortion pregnancy centers, churches and other places of religious worship. President Donald Trump announced days into his presidency that he is limiting enforcement of the FACE Act, and pardoned 23 anti-abortion protesters who were convicted on FACE charges. Several of those pardoned, some of whom were serving prison time, immediately said they plan to return to targeting and invading abortion clinics.
“When I hear there’s somebody who’s got a hit list of abortion providers, I don’t know if they are somebody who was convicted [on FACE Act charges] who was just released, right?” Hagstrom Miller said. “I’ve got that context in my head as I’m trying to navigate who might be driving around the Twin Cities.”
Following a nearly two-day search by more than 100 law enforcement officials, Boelter was apprehended on Sunday night in the woods near his home. The 57-year-old “stalked his victims like prey,” Thompson said in a press briefing on Tuesday.
“This is the stuff of nightmares,” he added.
Hagstrom Miller still asked local police to sweep the clinic Monday morning to ensure the building was safe for staff and patients to enter.