Seven Pro-Life Activists Face Jail After Convictions for Abortion Clinic Blockade

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Seven US pro-life activists are facing up to 10 years in prison and/or a fine after being convicted last week (August 20) of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) and engaging in a “Conspiracy Against Rights”, Christian Post (CP) reports.

After an 11-day trial in Detroit, Michigan, a federal jury found Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, Eva Edl, Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Joel Curry, and Justin Phillips of unlawfully blockading an abortion clinic in Sterling Heights, Michigan in 2020, CP reports.

The defendants were each convicted of a felony conspiracy against rights and a Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act offense, the US Department said in an August 20 press release. Sentencing will take place at a later date, the DOJ said.

The FACE Act provides federal criminal charges to anyone who “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been” providing “reproductive health services.”

“These defendants orchestrated an unlawful clinic blockade and physically obstructed patients seeking access to their doctors, without regard to the serious medical needs of the women they blocked from accessing reproductive health care,” DOJ Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, said in a statement. “These defendants intentionally broke the law. One woman’s fetus experienced fetal abnormalities and the defendants’ coordinated campaign of physical obstruction posed a grave and real threat to her health and fertility.”

Responding to the convictions after having assisted the defendant Gallagher in his defense, the conservative Thomas More Society said in a press statement: “Yet again, the Biden-Harris Department of Justice has decided to characterize the actions of peaceful pro-lifers as a felony ‘Conspiracy Against Rights,’ punishable by over a decade in federal prison. After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we believe the FACE Act to be unconstitutional, and we will continue to advocate on behalf of peaceful pro-life citizens like Chet Gallagher, Lauren Handy, and Paul Vaughn, who have been targeted with harsh prosecution by this Department of Justice.”

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