Six anti-abortion activists found guilty and face possible long sentences
A federal jury convicted six pro-life activists of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) and a felony conspiracy against rights.
There’s that conspiracy charge again, a way to up the ante on any group of people who act in concert. In this case, it was a nonviolent protest that involved praying, singing hymns, and sitting in front of a door at an abortion clinic. If I’m understanding the case, it was the blocking of the door – the location of their protest – that constituted the violation of the law, which says these are possible elements of the crime:
(1) intentionally injuring, intimidating, or interfering with, or attempting to injure, intimidate, or interfere, any person by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services; … (3) intentionally damaging or destroying the property of a facility, or attempting to do so, because such facility provides reproductive health services, or intentionally damaging or destroying the property of a place of religious worship.
They face the possibility of 10+ years in prison, but have not been sentenced yet so there is also the possibility of lighter sentences. But that conspiracy charge indicates that the prosecution would certainly like long sentences.
The statute is not just about abortion clinics; it also applies to other facilities:
The statute protects all patients, providers, and facilities that provide reproductive health services, including pro-life pregnancy counseling services and any other pregnancy support facility providing reproductive health care. Where state statutes and local ordinances also prohibit certain types of conduct directed at health care providers, federal, state and local authorities work together to determine what charges are appropriate to bring.
As Mary Chastain – the author of the Legal Insurrection post – points out, however, has the FACE act also been used against the perpetrators of many acts of vandalism against pro-life pregnancy centers? When I did a quick search, I found this from last October:
In a separate incident the year prior, in June 2022, CompassCare’s [a pro-life center] location in Buffalo was firebombed. Footage has revealed two masked males were responsible, and they remain unidentified. Harden previously stated, “… [O]ver 300 attacks on pro-life entities have occurred with zero convictions. Both federal House and Senate judiciary committees are investigating the DOJ and FBI’s refusal to thoroughly investigate and prosecute violent crimes against pro-life pregnancy centers like CompassCare.”
That indicates another two-tier system of justice enforcement. The statute protects both types of center, but it seems that the DOJ and FBI pick and choose which type to protect through criminal charges:
The FACE Act prevents both pro-abortion and pro-life protestors from obstructing or interfering with reproductive health facilities, including pro-life pregnancy centers, though it has primarily been used against pro-lifers. …
Though there have been numerous prosecutions of pro-lifers for FACE Act violations, pro-abortion attacks have largely gone unpunished, despite the fact that attacks against PRCs and other pro-life facilities skyrocketed following the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade. Last November, FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted that “probably in the neighborhood of 70% of our abortion-related violence cases or threats cases are cases of violence or threats against […] pro-life organizations.” Despite this, PRCs like CompassCare have had to fight for help in identifying the vandals and putting an end to the violence.
“It is ridiculous that as pro-life citizens we are forced to do the job of both the FBI and DOJ,” said CompassCare’s CEO James Harden in a statement to The Washington Times. “The FBI refused to investigate so we hired private investigators. The DOJ refuses to indict, so we brought FACE charges.”
If anyone knows of a DOJ prosecution of someone for defacing or blocking a pro-life pregnancy clinic, please put a link in the comments.
A possible 10+ years in prison for sitting in front of the door and singing hymns is outrageous. Note all the people now blocking traffic and preventing people from getting to places they need to be are not charged with conspiracy to violate rights, although that’s what they’re doing.
Don’t these people know that abortion is a sacrament ? The new religion of Progressivism has a few sacred subjects that must not be disturbed. Abortion is #1 and Socialism is #2. Among mortal sins are “Islamophobia” and “Right Wing thinking.”
Thus justice for the Deplorables is served.
Meted out by zealots.
abortion is no longer the law of the land, specially in tennessee, so the question should be moot,
Human rites, eugenics, a wicked solution under the nominally “secular” Pro-Choice ethical religion of progressive sects are righteous.
That said, keep women affordable, available, reusable, and taxable, and the “burden” of evidence sequestered in sanctuary States in darkness.
Six weeks to baby meets granny in biological, if not evolutionary, state, and a legal state of life in all 50 states. #NoJudgment #NoLabels
Some, Select [Baby] Lives Matter
TN. I’m very suprised.
Abortion is their Golden Calf, to be protected all all cost.
Groveling they are terrorists and swearing they will never vote for Trump might get them a lesser sentence.
Don’t these people know that abortion is a sacrament ?
Mike K:
I’ve never forgotten this feminist quote:
______________________________________________
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
–Gloria Steinem
______________________________________________
Well, trans to the contrary, men can’t get pregnant, so feminists and their “allies” pushed on to make abortion a sacrament on their own.
The Gynarchy has spoken.
But it’s different when they do it.
Of course, a Good Quote and its Author are almost never quite what they seem:
_______________________________
By the way, my title above is an abbreviated quote from Gloria Steinem who popularized the full quote in 1971, two years before Roe. “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” The statement is profound, but in her memoir, Steinem said she first heard it from an elderly female Boston cab driver.
https://smdp.com/2019/05/17/if-men-could-get-pregnant/
huxley,
It’s an absurd statement, but if one wants to bother to engage with Ms. Steinem on her logic; an apt reply would be:
“Yes. That is precisely why childbirth is entrusted to women. Men lack the biological faculties to understand the nature of carrying a child to term and bringing it to life outside a mother’s womb. This is why women should resist the cretinous strategies of men to promote casual sex in order to fulfill their selfish interests. Birth control? One can’t ‘control’ birth any more than one can control any other natural, biologic function. Men will never know the presence of life within the womb. It is a gift reserved for the female of our species, and it grants women the understanding to know life, even life as yet unborn, is to be nurtured and protected.”
maybe this was part of her cia training, she worked briefly for the national students association that operated in eastern europe or work as a playboy bunny ,when she wrote a certain piece, regardless it doesn’t make any sense,
of course birth control was the project of margaret sanger, and agreed upon by web dubois, who though dimly of his colored cohort (that was the term in 1908, when the NAACP was founded right) as well as immigrants, dubois indulged in the platonic philosopher kings model, now denatilization is off a piece with bringing large cohorts of low skilled labor, yet it clashes with the notion that people are excess carbon, so why import more of them,
Wray told Congress today that the FBI is not investigating any of the pro-Hamas hoodlums who destroyed federal property a few days ago. This is not a two-tier Justice system: That would require that both sides get tried and only one side is found guilty. It’s a one-way Justice system. Jail for righties. No punishment at all for lefties.
If Gloria had a brain she’d be, even more dangerous.
But unlike Harvard faculty, she admitted that the idea wasn’t her’s.
JackWayne:
Prosecutors are part of the justice system. The DOJ decides whom it will prosecute. The decision not to prosecute, or to let someone off with a wrist slap, is also part of the justice system. It’s actually a very large part of it. If those decisions are made with politics in mind – prosecution for one side and no charges for the other – that is part of a two-tiered justice system.
“If those decisions are made with politics in mind – prosecution for one side and no charges for the other – thatIf those decisions are made with politics in mind – prosecution for one side and no charges for the other – that is part of a two-tiered justice system.”
It is part of a two-tiered Injustice system. The term ‘justice’ cannot legitimately be applied to a two-tiered system, in which political persecution is visited upon only one side with the other side having a get out of jail free card.
Cornhead:
It was in Nashville. Nashville/Davidson County is a deep blue island in red sea. Presumably the jury pool was largely Davidson County.
I haven’t read all the details, but I’m guessing the defendants refused a plea offer because they felt they had done nothing wrong, morally. I admire their principles but from a practical standpoint, it was very risky, given the venue.
That is, unfortunately where our judicial system stands. From Trump on down to these folks, zealous prosecutors will selectively indict and try conservatives in deep blue jurisdictions and jury pools are likely to convict, based on their political beliefs.
Is the same true in red areas? Not to the same degree for certain.
The slow but steady march towards authoritarianism….continues
I’ll add that while I am tepidly pro-life, my mom is strongly pro-life. She’s one of an almost extinct breed: a deeply religious, pro-life Democrat. Or at least she was until 2018. She was really, really disgusted with the way Democrats treated Brett Kavanagh. And while she had no love of Trump, she recognized the Russia hoax for what it was.
I have carefully avoided discussing politics with her since then so I have no idea if she finally gave up on the party she and her Polish parents and grandparents loyally supported for 100+ years; if she finally understood the party of FDR and JFK is dead and buried
But anyway, my mother protested outside of our local Planned Parenthood occasionally for years. She never went in the building or blocked access. Still, we live in a deep blue city in a deep blue state. Seeing this news honestly makes me a little relieved she can no longer protest (she’s in the early stages of dementia and is going into assisted living).
Men can’t get pregnant, but they do commit their life and fortune to serving wife and Posterity.
It’s a federal statute, so the prosecutor is whichever troll Merrick Garland has placed in Nashville.
==
Here’s an idea of what to do with the 93 U.S. Attorney’s offices: fire every lawyer working in them.
Geoffrey Britain:
Of course it’s not just.
But it’s part of the justice system, according to the definition of that term, Orwellian though it might be.
The Pro-Abortion ‘Life Of The Mother’ Argument Is A False Flag Operation
Of course, a Good Quote and its Author are almost never quite what they seem:
I can’t help revising that line a few hours later:
A Good Quote and its Author are soon parted.
If the perps are not forwarded to the prosecutors, IE no investigation at all, then there is no prosecutorial discretion. There is no paper trail to implicate a prosecutor later on. The lefties walk.
Rufus T. Firefly on January 31, 2024 at 6:17 pm
Very beautifully stated.
Rufus T, I agree with R2L. Very beautifully stated, indeed.
The humans are aping something special. Deplorables. Send in the clowns.
n.n.,
Thank you for the Federalist link.
Here’s another good quote that I think is even more apropos the topic at hand, and its author seems not to be in dispute.
“Who? Whom?”
So:
– Antifi/Floyd protesters were (generally) not charged for firebombing a federal courthouse and burning a police precinct as well as numerous businesses and homes in cities all over the country.
– Pro-Hamas protesters who are shutting down public roads are not charged.
– There is no urgency to identify or charge the wave of vandals who hit Catholic churches and crisis pregnancy centers after Dobbes (these would also be FACE act matters)
– Pro-aborts flagrently violated the law by demonstrating in front of the Justices’ private homes. Not only were they not charged, they weren’t even stopped.
And yet they’re trying to give people 11 years of hard time for peacefully blocking the entrance of an abortion clinic?
It’s stuff like this that leaves a crack in the door that might cause me to vote Trump after all simply as the only available instrument for getting Democrats out of the White House. Republics don’t survive this sort of politicized “justice.”
How much harm will be done by four more years of this nonsense? I know Trump’s “retribution” schtick is about doing the same thing to the left, but his delivery-to-talk ratio, if you will, is often quite low. What harm is Trump going to be realistically permitted to do with the press and his own judges keeping him between the sidelines?
If Democrats were trying to get me to rationalize voting for Trump, I’m not sure what they would be doing differently.
I’m flappergasted.
As they say, “When pigs fly”…um, make that “talk”…
“Cambridge scientist dubbed the ‘real life Doctor Dolittle’ claims he can talk to animals – so we put his skills to the test on clips of pigs, cats and dolphins (with incredible results!);
“Animal expert Dr Arik Kershenbaum has been called the real ‘Doctor Dolittle’ “—
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13024329/Cambridge-scientist-Doctor-Dolittle-talk-animals.html
(Apparently, he speaks Yiddish to them, with surprising outcomes…but then, it IS that kind of language…)
yiddish not standard english, like dr doolittle, stranger than fiction, then again I’m reminded there was a real life expedition to find the ark in 1910, led by a former British Army officer, who dug near the Temple Mount, under the Haj’s more moderate brother, but still caused a kerfluffle
Kate hit the conundrum on the head first post.
Like the BLM riots, some are just let off the hook for doing more than others.
I was wondering how this could be about The Great Orange Whale, and yet, there it is.
you can vote for the easter bunny, tin man, i still wonder if abortion is no longer the law of the land, if this is happening in a red state, well could the atty general
pardon the men involved, would he,
across the pond
https://twitter.com/EvaVlaar/status/1753042053930377345
miguel cervantes – The FACE act is a federal law. State AGs and/or governors can’t pardon federal crimes.
Joan Andrews Bell of NJ is currently incarcerated for protesting at an abortion clinic. She is in her 70’s. If you want to see her story, just google her name.
“The statute protects all patients, providers, and facilities that provide reproductive health services, including pro-life pregnancy counseling services and any other pregnancy support facility providing reproductive health care. Where state statutes and local ordinances also prohibit certain types of conduct directed at health care providers, federal, state and local authorities work together to determine what charges are appropriate to bring.”
Is there any similar statute protecting those attending religious services?
Cappy:
The same statute protects houses of worship. If you follow the link I gave in the post, you’ll find this:
@Rufus,
Your words remind me of an ancient quote from an African woman: “A man can father a thousand children and never know it, but a woman is always a mother even if her child dies, even if all her children die. Men don’t understand these things. That’s why we won’t be told what to do by our husbands.”
Unfortunately, most women are “told what to do” by their husbands/boyfriends, and all the sweet sentiments in the world won’t change that fact. When the stick turns blue, most women have a storm of worry: “What happens if my partner deserts me? What if I get sick? What if I can’t work? What if I die? Who’s going to pay the bills? How will the rent get paid? Who’s going to take care of the children I already have?…”
Telling her that her problems are trivial compared to “the sanctity of life” isn’t going to win her heart, mind, or vote. Help her first, with food, money, pro bono medical or legal work, a shelter if she’s thrown out or evicted, or just lend a sympathetic ear for a while. A sonogram and a few baby clothes don’t begin to cover it. If you want to win votes, you have to win hearts and minds first.