EDITOR'S NOTE: The suspect was arrested and released on Wednesday night by Huntsville Police after being charged with third-degree aggravated assault.
May 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — The woman who assaulted a pro-life supporter outside the Alabama Women’s Center in Huntsville just over a week ago has been identified, with a warrant issued for her arrest.
Mary Baggett had some hesitation in signing the complaint against the woman who struck her in front of the abortion facility as Baggett demonstrated in defense of life there on Friday, May 3.
But the Huntsville abortion abolitionist said that while she feels bad for the woman who struck and injured her, she is concerned over the escalating violence that pro-abortion individuals are exacting upon pro-life advocates and felt she needed to do what she could about it.
“I just felt I needed to do it for all the other Christians who are going out to the abortion mills,” Baggett told LifeSiteNews.
“They’re escalating things,” Baggett said of abortion supporters.
“I know a lot of people get hurt trying to rescue babies,” she said. “I just can’t believe the things that are happening to people.”
Baggett referenced the recent assault of a Created Equal team member by a pro-abortion woman at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and another pro-life advocate assaulted outside an abortion facility in Texas in January.
Baggett and her son were outside the Alabama Women’s Center that Friday at the same time that another pro-life young man and woman were there, and Baggett caught the assault on video.
The female assailant and another man were leaving the abortion facility parking lot in their respective cars when they began to verbally challenge the four pro-life supporters.
After some back and forth primarily with the male driver and the other young pro-life man, the assailant left her car and approached the pro-life group. She hollered angrily that they did not have permission to record her.
After trying to confront the young pro-life man, the assailant charged Baggett and struck her, knocking her phone from her hands.
The assailant took Baggett’s phone and ran back to her car. Baggett followed, telling her to return the phone. The woman eventually threw Baggett’s phone into the grass before leaving in her car.
Both of Baggett’s hands were hurt, she said, as were her feet and back. She was treated at the scene by emergency services, the police came, and she filed a report. When she signed the complaint Monday of this week, her hand was still bruised, and the charge was upgraded from harassment/simple assault to assault in the third degree.
Baggett told LifeSiteNews she was expecting something that day — and that she felt compelled to film for her protection and that of her son.
The week before, she said, the 300-plus-pound husband of one of the facility’s escorts approached Baggett outside the abortion facility in a threatening manner, coming within 10 feet or so. He spoke angrily to Baggett following Baggett having earlier questioned the abortion facility escort about her encouragement of abortion while herself being a mother.
“He just had a murderous look in his eyes,” Baggett recalled.
When she took out her phone to record him, he jumped in his car and left.
The police told her when they came that since the man did not threaten her or have a weapon, it did not consist of assault, therefore he could not be charged.
In both instances, Baggett said, abortion facility escorts had spoken to the aggressor just prior to the hostile exchange.
Based upon that experience, she’s convinced that the abortion facility staff is trying to frighten her and others away from demonstrating outside the facility.
Baggett said as well that at least two staffers or escorts from the abortion facility witnessed the assault on her and also filmed the incident.
LifeSiteNews did not hear back from the Alabama Women’s Center on an inquiry into its policy of its staff and volunteers engaging or encouraging others to engage with pro-life demonstrators.
The mainstream media underreport pro-abortion violence and harassment against pro-life people and groups, despite these incidents having occurred somewhat regularly for some time. At the same time, the abortion lobby attempts to paint pro-lifers as violent, with the help of a willing media establishment and dubious industry reports.
A sampling of recent and otherwise notable examples illustrates the pattern.
In the days immediately before the May 3 assault on Baggett in front of the Huntsville, Alabama, abortion facility, Pennsylvania Democratic state representative Brian Sims verbally assaulted a Catholic woman praying the rosary outside a Philadelphia Planned Parenthood. Sims posted video on social media of himself doing so and had also posted video of himself harassing three teen pro-life girls, their mother, and another young man outside the same Planned Parenthood, offering money to anyone who would dox the minor girls.
Last month, a pro-life woman was assaulted by a woman leaving a Louisville, Kentucky, abortion facility, resulting in the pro-life woman suffering a broken thighbone and a bleeding head wound.
In Fort Worth, Texas, in January, a man repeatedly punched a young pro-life man in the face — the attacker also asking the pro-life young man if he wanted to die, referencing his family as well.
Last October during the Life Chain in Toronto, Canada, a man kicked a pro-life woman in the shoulder after she began filming him vandalizing the property of pro-lifers at the event.
Alabama is one of several states where lawmakers have been working to advance pro-life legislation amid other states’ passing of radical abortion expansion laws, both sides with an eye on the possibility of Roe v. Wade being revisited at the Supreme Court.
Personhood Alabama filed a wrongful suit against Alabama Women’s Center in February on behalf of a father whose child was aborted at the facility despite his appeals to his girlfriend to keep their child, arguing that the unborn child is a legal person under state law.
Baggett consented to an interview about her attack in the local media, though she worried about doing it, because she thought the incident would be twisted in favor of the abortion facility and also expose her to more pro-abortion vitriol.
“I knew I was risking something by going on the news,” she told LifeSiteNews. “I’ve seen people talk about my death on Facebook.”
She agreed to it to help expose the abortion facility, thinking that if even one person could be convinced to help the unborn because the interview, it would be worth the risk.
The interview had not aired as of press time.
Baggett had been able to give police the license plate of the man who had challenged them from his car before the assault, and authorities were able to eventually identify the woman who assaulted her.
She debated signing the complaint for the assailant’s arrest.
Baggett told LifeSiteNews she feels bad for the woman and has no malice toward her. And while the violence is escalating, she said it could have been a lot worse for her. However, she said she felt she owed it to the others who perform pro-life outreach who perform outreach to abortion-vulnerable people outside these facilities.
“I feel like I’d be doing a disservice to all our brothers and sisters who are doing this to not hold people to account,” Baggett said.