U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson accepted Green’s plea agreement with prosecutors during the change-of-plea hearing.
Lorna Roxanne Green, a 22-year-old abortion opponent, pleaded guilty to a federal arson charge on Thursday, admitting that anxiety and nightmares about Wyoming’s first full-service abortion clinic drove her to break into and set fire to the facility
Lorna Roxanne Green now faces up to 20 years in prison, with the sentencing scheduled for October 6. The arson incident occurred at the Wellspring Health Access clinic in Casper in May 2022, just weeks before its planned opening. The damage caused by the fire kept the clinic closed for nearly a year.
The Wellspring clinic, which eventually opened in April, provided both surgical and pill abortions, marking the first facility of its kind in Wyoming in over a decade. The state had only one other abortion clinic, located 250 miles away in Jackson, which offered abortions solely through pills.
Julie Burkhart, the President of Wellspring, expressed her relief that Lorna Roxanne Green took responsibility for her actions but also lamented the harm caused by the attack. The clinic sustained almost $300,000 in damages, and the delayed opening left individuals seeking abortion or contraception without immediate options.
Violence and threats against abortion providers and patients increased in 2022 following the Supreme Court‘s decision to overturn nationwide abortion rights. Abortion has remained legal in Wyoming despite legal challenges to new bans, including a proposed explicit ban on abortion pills, which was blocked by a judge pending the ongoing lawsuit.
Lorna Roxanne Green, a mechanical engineering student at Casper College, exhibited no apparent anti-abortion views on social media, despite telling investigators that Lorna Roxanne Green opposed abortion
The investigation made slow progress until a reward of $15,000 was offered, leading to multiple tipsters identifying Lorna Roxanne Green as the perpetrator.
Ryan Semerad, Lorna Roxanne Green’s attorney, acknowledged her wrongdoing but described her as an otherwise good person. Lorna Roxanne Green acknowledged undergoing treatment for a mental illness but did not provide further details.
The arson attack and the subsequent plans for Wellspring Health Access added to the already contentious abortion debate in Wyoming, where women often travel to nearby states, like Colorado, for abortion procedures. Last summer, Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens suspended an abortion ban after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and she subsequently suspended a new ban that aimed to address the legal flaws of the first one, along with Wyoming’s ban on abortion pills. Owens had raised concerns that a 2012 state constitutional amendment guaranteeing residents’ right to make healthcare decisions conflicted with the bans.
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