In the Age of Roe, it was not uncommon for Republicans to condemn violence directed at a hostile political faction like the pro-choice movement.

In 2015, when a Planned Parenthood clinic was attacked, it wasn’t just President Barack Obama who expressed outrage, but former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who had campaigned on adding a constitutional amendment defining personhood at conception. “There’s no excuse for killing other people,” Huckabee said. He called the attack “domestic terrorism.”

Florida Governor Jeb Bush, in 2003, said he wouldn’t be “bullied” into stopping the execution of convicted murderer Paul Hill, an anti-abortion minister who had been sentenced to death for killing a doctor who provided abortions and the doctor’s bodyguard.

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan, who had taken flack for not speaking out earlier against violence directed at abortion providers, did just that, vowing to “do all in my power to assure that the guilty are brought to justice.”

That was then—when the old political norms were still intact. In the Age of Dobbs—in the aftermath of the rise of Donald Trump and the reaction to his rise—the response to violent attacks on pro-life centers has, so far, been extremely subdued.