Crime & Law
Cook County’s Top Prosecutor Seeks More Protections for Reproductive Health Centers After Palm Springs Bombing
Damage to a building is seen after an explosion in Palm Springs, Calif., on Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)
Cook County’s top prosecutor is renewing her calls for a new state law that would define attacks on reproductive health care centers as terrorism, days after a California fertility clinic was bombed.
Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke on Monday called on Illinois legislators to pass a bill that would amend the terrorism article of the state’s criminal code to include language protecting reproductive health care facilities.
This comes after authorities said a 25-year-old man detonated a car bomb Saturday that left him dead, injured four others and damaged a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California.
“The deadly terrorist attack in Palm Springs was a heinous and intentional assault on women’s reproductive freedom and is unfortunately only the latest such example across the country,” O’Neill Burke said Monday. “This is exactly why I worked to introduce legislation that ensures any such incident in Illinois is treated as the terrorist act that it is, and it’s a shame certain interest groups and legislators worked behind the scenes to put a brick on it.”
The man the FBI believes was responsible for the explosion that ripped through the fertility clinic left behind “anti-pro-life” writings before carrying out an attack investigators called terrorism, authorities said Sunday.
Guy Edward Bartkus of Twentynine Palms, California, was identified by the FBI as the suspect in the apparent car bomb detonation Saturday. Authorities said he left behind writings that seemed to indicate anti-natalist views, which hold that people should not continue to procreate.
The blast gutted the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic and shattered the windows of nearby buildings along a palm tree-lined street. Witnesses described a loud boom followed by a chaotic scene, with people screaming in terror and glass strewn along the sidewalk and street.
Bartkus was the only person killed in the bombing.
Bartkus attempted to livestream the explosion and left behind writings that communicated “nihilistic ideations” that were still being examined to determine his state of mind, said Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office. U.S. Attorney Bilal “Bill” Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in the area, called the message “anti-pro-life.”
“This was a targeted attack against the IVF facility,” Davis said Sunday. “Make no mistake: we are treating this, as I said yesterday, as an intentional act of terrorism.”
That legislation promoted by O’Neill Burke, HB2679, was introduced in February, but was re-referred to the Rule Committee the following month. A similar bill in the state Senate was referred to Assignments in February.
O’Neill Burke’s office this month introduced a new Choice Protection Unit, which it says is a first-of-its-kind initiative that brings together a courthouse supervisor with attorneys, investigators and administrative personnel to handle cases involving violence against abortion providers or patients seeking abortion care.
“As more women visit Illinois for these services after the demise of Roe V. Wade, the CPU ensures women’s access to reproductive services will not be harmed and serves as a model for other prosecutors’ offices to follow,” the state’s attorney’s office said in a statement. “In Cook County, the CPU will be a legal bulwark against threatening tactics and brings together a resourced team to study and stay on top of activities and trends in this emerging area of jurisprudence.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
