Man protesting outside Orlando abortion clinic arrested for spitting on patient escort

A middle-aged man from Melbourne will head to court next month after spitting on a pro-choice volunteer outside of an Orlando abortion clinic in May. The man, Reynaldo Sepulveda, was arrested by an Orlando Police Department officer on May 11, and charged with one count of battery, a first-degree misdemeanor, according to an arrest affidavit.

Video footage provided to Orlando Weekly by Winnie, a volunteer with the patient escort group Stand With Abortion Now , shows Winnie filming a small group of anti-abortion protesters as they sit in a circle outside the clinic. Viewers can hear Winnie share her observations about the group when — mid-sentence — Sepulveda turns around in his chair, spots Winnie, and spits water over his shoulder on her.

“Did you just just spit on me?” Winnie asks in the video, filmed outside the Center of Orlando for Women, a clinic where anti-abortion activists gather nearly every day. “You know I have that on film, right?”

Stand With Abortion Now, a grassroots group that first emerged after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022, aims to help patients by safely escorting them in and out of the abortion clinic, while shielding them (sometimes literally) from anti-abortion activists that line the property.

Unlike some escort groups, SWAN has a reputation for taking a confrontational approach to patient escort practices, which can sometimes involve taunting or otherwise ridiculing anti-abortion activists on video.

According to arresting officer Andre Holzendorf, Sepulveda claimed he did not see Winnie (who requested that Orlando Weekly withhold her full name due to safety concerns) as he was turning around to spit. “Sepulveda advised they [his group] were just upset and wanted to be left alone,” Holzendorf wrote in the affidavit.

After viewing video footage provided by Winnie, however, Holzendorf concluded through his investigation of the incident that Sepulveda’s act was intentional.

Although no firearm was used during this altercation, video footage also shows that during his arrest, police discovered that Sepulveda was armed, with a small gun attached to his ankle underneath one of his pant legs. The gun is not mentioned in the arrest affidavit.

The Center of Orlando for Women, formerly licensed as the Orlando Women's Center, is a private abortion clinic located south of downtown Orlando that is frequently targeted by activists who are vehemently opposed to abortion.

One professional anti-abortion activist, John Barros,  stood outside the clinic to “counsel” patients and passerby nearly every weekday for 20 years. Barros recently passed away from cancer in February — but others who looked up to Barros have continued his legacy of “counseling” patients from a sidewalk in front of the clinic. Some also set up lawn chairs on a private driveway that the clinic shares with an anti-abortion doctor who practices medicine next door and gives them permission to do so.

To help protect staff, the clinic hires off-duty police officers (which isn’t cheap ) several days a week to keep an eye on the clinic from outside, as some protesters become aggressive or use megaphones (which is illegal) to broadcast their messages to patients and clinic staff minding their own business inside.

Under city law, it is unlawful to use a mechanical loud speaker or other sound amplification device outdoors on public or private property without a city-issued permit, but off-duty officers aren't always there to catch violations. Even without amplifiers, an Orlando Weekly reporter has also witnessed protesters shouting in the direction of the building, or attempting to approach patients as they walk toward or out of the clinic’s doors.

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One young man, facing the clinic from a sidewalk just weeks before Sepulveda's arrest, was witnessed by Orlando Weekly hollering into a bullhorn. “They delight in the death of the innocent!” he yelled, describing the clinic as “Hell.”

The date was May 1, the day Florida's six-week abortion ban fully took effect. No off-duty officer was present at the time. Another man, who only identified himself to Orlando Weekly that day as TJ, described the clinic as “a place of death.” He and other anti-abortion advocates who station themselves outside of the clinic characterize what they do as an attempt to help people who are lost.

On the day of Sepulveda’s arrest, less than two weeks later, Anne Marchetti — another anti-abortion activist who visits the clinic on weekends — unsuccessfully attempted to get officers’ attention with her own plea.

“Officers, there are innocent persons being murdered inside,” Marchetti can be heard and seen saying in video footage, as multiple OPD officers speak to Sepulveda about his alleged crime.

Marchetti, a veteran in the anti-abortion space , has been known to use her own body-worn camera or her phone to record video of patients as they walk in and out of the clinic, as an Orlando Weekly reporter herself has witnessed.

“This is the genocide of our time,” Marchetti told Orlando Weekly last April, adding that she she would “not stand” with any Republican politician — including Donald Trump — “unless they stand as an abolitionist of abortion.”

The federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, passed 30 years ago, “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Still, pro-choice advocates have argued it doesn't do enough to adequately protect clinics and staff, although the anti-abortion movement is still trying to get rid of it anyway .

According to an annual survey by the National Abortion Federation, a professional association that represents abortion providers, obstructions at U.S. abortion clinics increased more than sixfold from 45 in 2021 to 287 in 2022, while reports of stalking, burglary and arson at clinics has also notably increased. While the report notes a decrease in trespassing, assault and battery during this period, the organization shares this was “likely” due to the closure of dozens of clinics that year, following the enactment of strict abortion bans.

Winnie, the volunteer whom Sepulveda spit on, told Orlando Weekly over text that she believes the alleged battery was “indicative of the [political] right's propensity for violence because they are unable to see the humanity in others that they've deemed to be beneath them.”

She believes her identity as a woman was one of several factors that motivated him to spit on her.

“He wanted to teach me a lesson in power,” she wrote, “that he has it, and I don't.”

Records show Sepulveda was booked into Orange County Jail shortly after his arrest. There, he was booed by members of SWAN, who were at the jail that day to support two people who had been arrested at a nearby pro-Palestine protest .

Sepulveda was quickly bailed out on a $1,000 cash bond, and does not have any arrest record in his home county of Brevard, beyond three traffic infractions that are more than two decades old.  He faces a pre-trial hearing on August 2, 2024 and has entered a plea of not guilty. In Florida, a first-degree misdemeanor for simple battery is punishable by up to one year in jail or 12 months probation, if convicted, plus a fine of up to $1,000.

Sepulveda's defense attorney, Robert Anthony O'Donnell of the O'Donnell Christopher law firm in Hialeah, did not respond to Orlando Weekly 's request for a statement on behalf of his client ahead of publication.

Florida has become a tumultuous political battleground on the issue of abortion, as abortion rights advocates now place their hope in a November ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, if approved by more than 60 percent of Florida voters. Clinics locally and across the state face a risk of closure , if it's not approved.

The measure, set to appear on the ballot as Amendment 4, is opposed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other anti-abortion conservatives like Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, whose political action committee recently contributed $1 million to an opposition campaign.

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