Anti-abortion activists have a long history of resorting to violence, and now, with the Supreme Court’s decision to end federal abortion access rights under Roe v. Wade, they’re even more emboldened to attack. Abortion providers are facing higher rates of violence, and the same is true for protesters, who have experienced ratcheted-up harassment and assault in the weeks since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling was announced. In a recent incident, a McGregor, Iowa, man has been arrested after allegedly striking a person protesting the SCOTUS abortion decision on Friday, July 22, KCRG reported.
Identified by police as Ronald Paradine, the man was charged with assault after walking across a street to confront protesters unprovoked and striking an individual multiple times. The demonstrators were lawfully protesting at a park.
“Film me all you want. You baby-killing motherfuckers are going to rot in hell,” Paradine yelled before attacking the protestor.
“There were a whole bunch of ladies there, and most of them were older, and I didn’t really want him to get in their faces, and then he ends up in my face,” the activist who was attacked told Iowa Starting Line. The victim chose not to be identified by name, for fear of further retaliation, but mentioned he was a teacher from the area.
He added: “We decided to do this in McGregor because it’s a small town, and these types of things don’t often happen in small towns where people get together and demonstrate.” He didn’t seem to expect someone to call demonstrators “communists and baby killers.”
The teacher captured the entire three-minute altercation in a first-person video he shared with Starting Line.
The following video contains graphic violence and language. It depicts Paradine punching the teacher multiple times in the face. Paradine is also seen making at least one attempt to strike a female protestor.
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“How many babies have you killed?” Paradine yells before striking the teacher a third time in the face. One of the female protestors came to the teacher’s defense, during which it seems Paradine was getting ready to hurt her, as well.
“You come in my little town with your stupid fucking signs,” Paradine yells at the 35-second mark.
“I live here, she lives here,” a female protestor offscreen replies. Paradine then called them “a bunch of communist motherfuckers” and raised both of his middle fingers.
“We’re not,” the teacher said. “You need to stop.”
Throughout the encounter, the teacher who was attacked neither raised his voice nor attempted to hit Paradine back.
Paradine was charged with assault, a simple misdemeanor under Iowa Code. He only spent a night in jail and was released the next day on a $500 bond.
“I don’t understand how what this man did to me can be illegal and cost him a night in jail and now him being charged with assault and this other individual in Cedar Rapids … has every right to run over people with his vehicle and then scare the bejesus and threaten with his vehicle—using it as a weapon,” the teacher said.
“I don’t see how that is in any way okay, or—to take this to the next level—does that mean that it should be legal for this man to have hit me in the face, since he disagreed with me and I was protesting?”
Despite the incident, the teacher told Iowa Starting Line that protests in McGregor will continue.
“The commons are a place to go and, as the First Amendment says, air our grievances and demonstrate and use our voice to have our government or our people representing us to hear us,” the teacher said.