An 89-year-old survivor of a concentration camp, Eva Edl, was found guilty of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act three months ago. Edl had participated in nonviolent civil disobedience at an abortion clinic. The Biden-Harris Department of Justice is seeking the maximum penalty of up to three years in prison.
Last month, Bevelyn Williams, a 33-year-old black mother of a 2-year-old girl, began serving a three-year prison sentence for violating the FACE Act.
And last year, two of my closest friends and colleagues, Lauren Handy and pro-life atheist Herb Geraghty, were convicted for a peaceful sit-in from late 2021 at an “all trimester” abortion clinic in Washington, D.C.
Two years after their 2021 civil disobedience, Lauren and I recovered the remains of 115 aborted babies from that same clinic, five of which were the size of premature infants. Two of the larger babies were dismembered, and three of them had wounds suggesting their manner of death may have violated federal laws: the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act and the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. Pulling their broken bodies out of that container of “medical waste” was the most devastating experience of our lives.
Lauren is now in a Tallahassee prison. She’s serving a nearly five-year sentence not for recovering these babies’ remains but for violating FACE at the clinic that produced those remains. Meanwhile, the bodies of the victims languish years later at the Washington medical examiner’s office, still awaiting an autopsy, an investigation, and justice.
The FACE Act was signed into law in 1994 by then-President Bill Clinton in response to mass collective action among young anti-abortion activists under the banner of the largest peaceful civil disobedience movement in U.S. history: Operation Rescue. Since 1994, more than 100 peaceful pro-lifers have been indicted under FACE.
Today, there are a total of 11 pro-life activists serving time behind bars after the Biden-Harris Justice Department prosecuted them under FACE. For the elderly among them, such as Eva Edl, this is a death sentence by incarceration.
I am a lifelong Democrat, yet I did not vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. Instead, I worked relentlessly to ensure that the public knew about her extremism.
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President-elect Donald Trump ran a campaign against government corruption and defied the Biden administration’s oppressive pursuit of its political opponents. During his campaign, he stated at least twice that he would “consider” pardons for the peaceful pro-life activists. Will he?
Pro-life America implores Trump to free the political prisoners and repeal the FACE Act.
Terrisa Bukovinac is the founder of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising.