Arsonist Ordered to Pay Nearly $300,000 for Damages to Wyoming Abortion Clinic

Just before 4 a.m. on the morning of the fire, police went to the clinic after receiving a report of a broken window, smoke coming from the building, and a person leaving the scene with a gas can, prosecutors said. Shortly afterward, firefighters extinguished the blaze, but not before it had caused “significant” damage to the structure, engulfing one room, spreading down the hallway, and causing fluorescent lights to melt and fall to the floor, the prosecutors said, noting that police had found gas cans inside the building.

Later, detectives were able to match a witness’s physical description of Ms. Green — a slender person, likely female, who was wearing jeans, a dark sweater and a white mask — with security camera footage that showed her smashing one of the clinic’s windows with a rock before carrying what appeared to be gasoline into the building and pouring it on the floor. But several months later, the authorities had yet to identify a suspect, and, in early March, they renewed their efforts and offered an additional reward for information leading to her capture. Ms. Green was arrested later that month.

She told investigators at the time that she had read about the clinic opening and that she had known it would offer abortion services. She told them she did not like abortion and was having nightmares caused by anxiety over the clinic, so she had decided to burn the building, prosecutors said.

When the Wellspring clinic opened in April, Wyoming had only weeks before become the first state to ban abortion pills, adding momentum to a push by conservative states and anti-abortion groups to target medication abortion, the method now used in a majority of pregnancy terminations in the United States. In June, a Wyoming judge temporarily blocked the law, a week before it was scheduled to take effect. The ban remains disputed in court.

Ms. Green’s lawyer, Ryan Semerad, wrote in an email on Wednesday that his client, who is serving her sentence at a federal prison camp in West Virginia, had agreed to repay the damages “as part of her efforts to atone for her actions.”