Active-duty Marine arrested for 2022 abortion clinic firebombing as violence against clinics surges

California Marine Chance Brannon, 23, and literal partner in crime Tibet Ergel, 21, currently face federal charges of “using an explosive or fire to damage real property affecting interstate commerce” after allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at a Planned Parenthood in Costa Mesa, California—where abortion remains legal and widely accessible.

What Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito couldn’t do with his poison word processor and stack of 17th century “Witch-Burning for Dummies” books is currently being handled by the right’s forced-birth shock troops. The Wednesday arrest of the Marine—who was stationed just 50 miles from the clinic at Camp Pendleton—and his friend was in connection with the March 2022 firebombing of a Planned Parenthood clinic, an incident that occurred roughly two months before Alito’s notorious Dobbs decision ended blanket protections for pregnant people across the country.

It’s just the latest evidence that abortion rights are not only endangered by right-wingers in state legislatures, but by the vigilantes their movement has inspired as well.

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