The central Illinois abortion clinic erupted in flames a little before midnight on a recent weekend.

A white pickup truck with red doors and a particularly loud exhaust, according to witnesses, parked near the Planned Parenthood Health Center in Peoria on Jan. 15. Video of the scene showed a man in a hooded coat exiting the vehicle carrying a laundry detergent-sized bottle. He then lit a rag on fire at one end of the bottle, smashed a window and threw the Molotov cocktail inside, before fleeing on foot, according to a criminal complaint filed in late January.

While no patients or staff were in the building and no one was injured, the firebombing caused about a million dollars in destruction to the health center, which won’t be able to reopen for months, Planned Parenthood of Illinois officials said.

About 6 miles away, another separate suspicious fire had engulfed a separate building with a disparate mission about two years ago: In May 2021, an early-morning blaze heavily damaged Women’s Care Center in Peoria, an anti-abortion pregnancy resource center. Authorities said that fire was also intentionally set.

These two parallel cases in one Illinois city illustrate the kind of violence and acts of intimidation abortion-related causes nationwide have endured for years.

Yet since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, reproductive rights organizations and anti-abortion groups alike are reporting unprecedented levels of threats, vandalism and acts of destruction.

For 12 years, Carol Tobias has served as the president of the Washington -based National Right to Life. While she said groups opposing abortion have always faced threats and risked reprisal, Tobias said “the assault, the violence against pro-life facilities has greatly escalated” since the fall of Roe.

“Pro-life pregnancy centers and churches, and pro-life organizations, have been firebombed and vandalized,” she said. “I think society has just gotten meaner, angrier.”

The FBI last month offered $25,000 rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for a series of recent attacks on reproductive services organizations across the country, which were set on fire, vandalized or defaced. Nine were anti-abortion organizations and one was a medical building used by Planned Parenthood in California.

“Today’s announcement reflects the FBI’s commitment to vigorously pursue investigations into crimes against pregnancy resource centers, faith-based organizations and reproductive health clinics across the country,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. “We will continue to work closely with our national, state, and local law enforcement partners to hold responsible anyone who uses extremist views to justify their criminal actions.”

The Justice Department lists on its website a litany of cases of violence, threats and harassment targeted at abortion providers and reproductive health services facilities. The National Abortion Federation reported rising cases of intimidation, harassment and vandalism — as well as assaults and batteries — at abortion clinics in its 2021 Violence and Disruption Statistics report, which was released in June and is the most recent data from the agency.

Melissa Fowler, chief program officer for the National Abortion Federation, said many of these types of incidents have become even more common since news of the high court’s draft opinion to reverse Roe was leaked to the press in May.

“It shouldn’t be seen as just part of the job of an abortion provider to deal with threats and harassment every day, on top of everything else they do to … help as many patients as they can in a landscape where access is dwindling,” she said. “It’s not surprising to me, because I know when there are things that abortion opponents see as victories — such as the Supreme Court decision and the passage of abortion bans — that can lead to an increase in this type of activity. But it shouldn’t be something we view as commonplace or we accept as commonplace.”

Shortly after the attack on the Peoria abortion clinic, investigators linked the truck captured on video to a suspect, who cited his opposition to a former girlfriend’s abortion and hoped to delay services for others as a motive, according the federal authorities.

Tyler Massengill, 32, of Chillicothe, in late January was arrested and charged with “malicious use of fire and an explosive to damage, and attempt to damage” the Planned Parenthood health center, according to a Justice Department statement.

Although Massengill initially denied responsibility, he later told investigators that a former girlfriend had an abortion in Peoria three years ago, which “upset Massengill,” according to the complaint. Massengill said he had been working in Alaska and his girlfriend informed him by telephone that she had become pregnant but decided to terminate.

“On or around January 15, 2023, Massengill heard or saw something that reminded him of the abortion, again upsetting him,” the complaint stated.

The suspect also told investigators that if the fire caused “a little delay” in a person receiving services at the health center, it might have been “all worth it,” according to the complaint.

Planned Parenthood of Illinois lamented the loss of reproductive and health services for the Peoria area.

“This senseless act of vandalism has robbed the community of access to birth control, cancer screenings, (sexually transmitted infection) testing and treatment, and gender-affirming care as well as medication abortion services,” said Jennifer Welch, the agency’s president and CEO, in a written statement. “We appreciate the outpouring of support from the community, state, and nation as we continue to meet our patients’ needs through telehealth and at our other 16 health centers across the state.”

The fire occurred just a few days after Illinois passed major abortion legislation that expanded the pool of medical providers and included protections for health care workers and out-of-state patients.

The law came amid a surge of patients traveling to Illinois for abortions as many surrounding states banned or highly restricted terminating a pregnancy, in the absence of federal abortion rights once guaranteed under Roe.

The Justice Department website lists more than 30 criminal and civil cases against abortion providers and reproductive health care services over the past decade. These includes the 2021 case of a man accused of using a slingshot to fire metal ball bearings at the glass door of the Planned Parenthood Health Center in the Edgewater neighborhood.

More recently, a Michigan man in October pleaded guilty to setting a July fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Kalamazoo. The man had “breached the fence surrounding the building, used a combustible fuel to ignite the exterior bushes of the building, lit a fireplace starter log, and then threw the burning log onto the roof of the building, ultimately starting two separate fires,” according to a statement by federal prosecutors.

Authorities said the man commented on abortion in videos he had posted online.

“Right now we have a genocide happening, genocide of babies …” he said in one video.

Fowler of the National Abortion Federation said that following the Supreme Court leak in May, “we saw an immediate uptick in online harassment and threats” against abortion providers and clinics.

“People who felt emboldened by the decision, who were celebrating it and, in some cases, not wanting to wait until it was delivered,” she said. “People that wanted clinics to shut down immediately.”

She cited various threatening and incendiary social media posts from May.

“It’s time to firebomb abortion clinics,” one Twitter message reads. “It’s too late to be ‘civil’ about murdering babies.”

“The Buffalo shooter should have started a Planned Parenthood Clinic,” another person posted on Twitter. “That way it would have been legal to murder Black people and brown people.”

Abortion providers have also reported an increase in the level of “hostility and aggressiveness” of protesters outside clinics, Fowler said. In some states where citizens are allowed to carry guns in the open, she said anti-abortion demonstrators have been reportedly holding firearms and other weapons.

“We know some protesters are showing up armed in places where they can open carry firearms,” she said. “That can be a very intimidating experience, when they are armed and visibly carrying weapons outside of a clinic.”

Over the summer, vandals shattered glass casing around a sign with the message “We support abortion on demand without apology” at Second Unitarian Church of Chicago.

A stained-glass window on the side of the church was also shattered.

A Chicago Police Department spokesperson said two females threw unknown objects at the church in August, “breaking the stained-glass picture and sign.” Church officials said a video recording showed two women throwing rocks and using pieces of fencing to smash the church window and sign. .

No one has been arrested for the act of vandalism, according to police.

But church leaders responded to the attack by hosting an interfaith rally in September, which was attended by more than 200 supporters.

“Our choice to support women and their medical choices is one that is clearly lined up with our beliefs and principles of Unitarian Universalism,” one clergy member said at the event. “We believe in the inherent dignity of all people and bodily autonomy is part of that dignity and worth.”

Women’s Care Center in Peoria was founded in 2013, at a building next to a now-defunct abortion clinic.

While Peoria Fire Department investigators determined the cause of the 2021 fire was arson, no arrests have been made; the case is still open, but no leads or new information has emerged since the fire, said Fire Department Chief Shawn Sollberger.

The pregnancy resource center in August moved to a new, larger location on Knoxville Avenue — down the street from the Planned Parenthood clinic that was set ablaze last month.

“Because of you, our center continues to set new records for women served and babies saved,” the website states, on a page with a button for donations. “And today 1 in 5 babies born in Peoria County start with Women’s Care Center. You are touching the lives of so many women … and saving so many babies.”

The Peoria location is one of more than 30 Women’s Care centers in about a dozen states, predominantly in the Midwest, according to the nonprofit’s website. Officials with Women’s Care Center did not immediately return requests for comment.

While abortion opponents across the country celebrated the demise of Roe, around the same time, a wave of arsons and vandalisms struck pregnancy centers and anti-abortion organizations across the country.

Just hours after the Supreme Court struck down Roe, a fire was reported at Life Choices, a Christian pregnancy center in Colorado.

The messages “bans off our bodies” and “if abortions aren’t safe neither are you” were spray painted on the outside in front of the center, according to FBI photos. The building “was vandalized and sustained fire and smoke damage as the result of an arsonist,” according to the FBI.

The same day, an unknown suspect threw a Molotov cocktail at Crisis Pregnancy Center in North Carolina, according to video surveillance posted on the FBI website; that building sustained minor damage.

As of late September, Catholic News Agency said it had tracked more than 100 alleged abortion-related attacks or incidents of vandalism since May at pregnancy centers, churches and anti-abortion organizations nationwide. The cases cited describe everything from graffiti sprayed on billboards to claims of death threats to suspected arsons.

Last month, the House approved a measure that “condemns recent attacks on pro-life facilities, groups and churches” and urges the Biden administration and law enforcement to “support their safety.”

Tobias of National Right to Life said attacks on churches and nonprofits “wreaks of cruelty and insensitivity, an uncaring nature.”

“There are just some elements of this society that don’t think choosing life for an unborn child is acceptable,” Tobias said. “And they’re doing everything they can to shut down the places that provide free help to a woman who needs it. And wants it.”

The Associated Press contributed.

eleventis@chicagotribune.com