Nishith Tharaka Vandebona, Death Threats, California 2022

Defendant Charged with Death Threats and Bomb Threats in Kern County

LOS ANGELES – A Kern County man has been charged with making threatening telephone calls last year, including to a Planned Parenthood office on the day the United States Supreme Court overturned its Roe v. Wade decision.

Nishith Tharaka Vandebona, 34, currently of Bakersfield, but who lived in Camarillo during the alleged offenses, is charged with three misdemeanor counts of threatened forcible intimidation regarding the obtaining and provision of reproductive health services under the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Vandebona also is charged with two felony counts of transmitting threatening communications in interstate commerce to another organization in Ventura County.

Vandebona pleaded not guilty late Wednesday afternoon to the charges against him and a May 30 trial date was scheduled. A federal magistrate judge ordered Vandebona jailed without bond.

“Death threats are never acceptable regardless of what a person believes,” said United States Attorney Martin Estrada. “No one should be threatened with death or bodily harm simply because they provide health services or work for a nonprofit. This indictment serves as a warning that there will be significant repercussions especially for anyone seeking to intimidate those seeking and providing reproductive health services.”

The indictment alleges that Vandebona used an internet application to create anonymous telephone numbers to make the threatening calls. During the spring of 2022, there was news coverage that the Supreme Court was considering overturning Roe, its 1973 decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion, after an initial draft of the new opinion was leaked.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court published a decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe and ruled that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. That day, using an anonymous number, Vandebona left a voicemail message containing death threats with Planned Parenthood California Central Coast, a Santa Barbara-based reproductive health services organization.

In addition to the threats made to Planned Parenthood, Vandebona allegedly called in a bomb threat in February 2022 to the office of Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), a Ventura-based non-profit organization that advocates for “zero population growth,” primarily through immigration restrictions.

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