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84-year-old Joan Jacobson, who was shot while canvassing against abortion in Michigan.Mary Margaret Olohan / Twitter

IONIA, Michigan (LifeSiteNews) — A 75-year-old Michigan man has been sentenced to community service for shooting a elderly pro-life woman, which he insisted, “was an accident.” 

On May 23, Judge Suzanne Hoseth Kreeger ordered Richard Harvey to serve 100 hours community service and gave him a suspended jail sentence of two months and a delayed sentence of one year on probation for shooting elderly pro-life volunteer Joan Jacobson in September 2022. 

Last month, Harvey pleaded no contest to felonious assault, careless discharge of a firearm causing injury, and reckless discharge of a firearm. 

“It was an accident,” Harvey claimed of the shooting, despite admitting that he let off a warning shot before shooting Jacobson in the back where the bullet went through her shoulder, very narrowly missing her spine.

At the time of the incident, Harvey told the local outlet WoodTV that he thought Jacobson was going to hit his wife with a clipboard when she was talking to her about abortion as part of her on-the-ground activism. 

“So without thinking, I went to club it away with the rifle and my finger was still in the trigger guard,” he said. “It went off and hit her about in here.” 

However, according to Jacobson, she was leaving the property when Harvey shot her in the back. 

“When that registered in my mind, I heard a shot, I felt some pain, and I thought he had hit me in the back,” she said. “I was just in shock. I said to myself, ‘Did I just get shot? Did he just shoot me?’” 

“I do think that he knew what he was doing,” Jacobson declared. “I think it was intentional.” 

Harvey was also ordered to pay $347.19 in restitution and to avoid all contact with Jacobson. 

While Harvey received minimal penalties for shooting an elderly woman, pro-life priest Father Fidelis Moscinski and three others were sentenced to jail time for taking part in a Red Rose Rescue in April 2021.

Abortion-related violence against pro-lifers has skyrocketed since the historic overturning of Roe v. Wade last year, with several recent incidents taking place on college campuses. 

On May 2, Shellyne Rodriguez, an adjunct assistant professor at Hunter College in New York City, was caught on video harassing two pro-life students before vandalizing their pro-life table. 

A few weeks later, Rodriguez was fired after she was caught on video holding a machete to New York Post reporter Reuven Fenton’s neck.

In April, pro-lifers from the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform were showing abortion victim photography at the University of Arizona when pro-abortion students hurled eggs at them. 

In March, LifeSiteNews reported that two activists faced felony charges after being accused of robbing a pro-lifer and resisting arrest by attacking a police officer during a pro-life event at the University of Florida. 

Similarly, during a recent speech by Students for Life of America president Kristan Hawkins at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Antifa members with messages of “Black Lives Matter” and “Transgender Power” broke out in violent protest. Two arrests have been made in connection with the attack. 

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