Pro-life activist claims the purpose of the FBI's visit to her mother was to 'intimidate,' part of a 'coordinated onslaught'

A pair of FBI agents stopped by the childhood home of a pro-life activist on April 18. They told the woman who answered the door that they were looking to speak to her daughter, who had long since moved from Virginia to Washington, D.C., and made no secret of having done so.

While the bureau's competence has come into question again in recent weeks, Elise Ketch thinks the FBI's efforts to darken her mother's doorstep in Virginia were not only a calculated move rather than misstep, but an effort to intimidate — an effort Ketch underscores has failed.

What's the background?

The Daily Signal reported that Ketch is a member of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, a leftist group that manages some rare consistency in its discussion of victimhood, acknowledging that there may be no group today more oppressed than the unborn.

According to its website, PAAU is "committed to the progressive feminist values of equality, non-violence, and nondiscrimination through an anti-capitalist lens. ... We're committed to unparalleled bravery and to always challenging the oppressive status quo. We're committed to ending elective abortion to matter how long it takes."

Ketch, 26, joined PAAU in December 2022 — just months after Catholic pro-life activist Matt Houck had his home besieged by 25 FBI agents and was dragged out at gunpoint in front of his family for having allegedly shoved an individual in front of an abortion clinic.

'Intimidation' with a smile

FBI agents Ashley Roberts and Kathleen Brown appeared at the Woodbridge, Virginia, home belonging to the activist's mother, Tracy Ketch, on April 18, which just happened to be one day after the pro-abortion terror group "Jane's Revenge" attacked a pregnancy center in Bowling Green, Ohio.

"We are both with the FBI," said the agent who identified herself as Roberts. "We just need to speak with her regarding some information that was sent to us."

Tracy Ketch notified the agents that her daughter no longer lived with her.

The agents asked for the activist's phone number and new address, adding, "She's not in any trouble. We just have some information we need to ask her about."

"We would tell you all the information because, like I said, she’s not in any trouble, but just out of respect for her, we’d like to speak with her first," added Roberts. "It's nothing."

In a second video taken by the doorbell camera, Tracy Ketch can be heard speaking to her daughter over the phone, indicating that two FBI agents are at the front door.

"FBI agents ... don't tell them anything," responded Elise Ketch.

Ketch suggested to the Daily Signal that she had "no idea what information the FBI was sent" that would prompt them to reach out to her, but suspected that they might be on a fact-finding mission to build a case against her PAAU colleague Lauren Handy, indicted under the FACE Act.

Around the time of her induction into the group in December, some of her fellow PAAU members were facing jail time for having allegedly violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in 2019.

The act bars activists from exercising their First Amendment rights near the entrances of abortion clinics and pro-life pregnancy centers alike, but Heritage suggested that the DOJ appears keen to primarily tackle perceived obstacles to women offing their young.

While Ketch reckons she had not run afoul of the act, she told the Daily Signal she had participated in PAAU's "Pink Rose Rescues," where activists handed out pink roses in the waiting rooms of abortion clinics, then left upon being informed that they were trespassing. The roses contained information about emergency pregnancy centers

Alternatively, Ketch said, "It’s also possible that they see me as a threat due to my pro-life activism and intended to investigate me. ... I believe the FBI’s true motive behind their visit to my parents’ home was to intimidate me and my team."

After mulling it over further, Ketch recently told Fox News Digital, "I think my mom's house was specifically targeted because I feel like they should … if they're really an intelligence agency, they should have known by now that I moved and that I'm living here in Washington, D.C. That's not a secret."

"So it only makes sense to me that they went to my mom's house just to intimidate my family and to intimidate me. It really does," said Ketch. "At the end of the day, it feels like a threat, but at the same time, like an empty one."

Ketch believes that pro-lifers, her group in particular, present a challenge to "institutional and corporate power, especially because the abortion industrial complex is a major pillar of power. It's the status quo. The government and our country, frankly, doesn't know how to run without child killing. So here we are. They really don't want us to topple that pillar for them. We're definitely a threat to the government."

Following the Dobbs ruling, which saw Roe v. Wade overturned, big businesses rushed to ensure that their female employees had what they needed in the way of abortion access to remain childless and productive.

The Biden administration and Democrats in Washington have similarly fought to foist abortion on red and blue states alike.

Extra to ostensibly letting hundreds of pro-abortion terror attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers, activists, and churches go unanswered or off easy, the FBI and Justice Department under President Joe Biden have taken an active role in advancing the cause of pro-abortion radicals in the United States.

The DOJ announced the establishment of the Reproductive Rights Task Force in July 2022. This task force's work has included centralizing "information about the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act," reported the Washington Examiner.

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who helms this task force, made her bias well known in December, claiming that the overturning of Roe v. Wade was "a devastating blow to women throughout the country, taking away the constitutional right to abortion and increasing the urgency of our work, including enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services."

Gupta went so far as to intimate that pro-lifers and the challenges they present to the abortion status quo are "insidious," comparing the pro-life cause to slavery and Jim Crow.

Referencing FBI whistleblower accounts on Thursday, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) noted, "If you're a parent attending a school board meeting; if you're a pro-lifer praying at a clinic, or you're a Catholic simply going to Mass, you are a target of the government, a target of the FBI."

Terrisa Bukovinac, the founder of PAAU, appears to agree.

Bukovinac told the Daily Signal, "The feds are desperate to find a reason to shut us down and they’re not above coming to our parents’ homes to try to find what they’re looking for.