The double standard of the Department of Justice has never been more obvious as it weaponizes the FACE Act to incarcerate pro-life Christians and lets other offenders off the hook.
On Tuesday, six pro-life Christians were charged with violating the FACE Act for peacefully protesting outside of an abortion clinic in Nashville, Tennessee, by singing hymns and praying for people as they went in.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) accused the peaceful protestors of using “force and physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, and interfere with employees of the clinic and a patient who was seeking reproductive health services.” Fascinatingly, the footage available shows absolutely nothing of the sort, with many of the protestors sitting down while a few others were standing and calmly speaking with passersby.
The FACE Act, or Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, prohibits “violent, threatening, damaging and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain or provide reproductive health services.”
The FACE Act supposedly is meant to equally protect “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.” Pro-life congressmen had the protection of crisis pregnancy centers in mind when they agreed to the bill in 1994.
Interestingly, of the perpetrators of the 88 attacks on pregnancy centers and pro-life organizations so far since the news of Roe v. Wade being overturned was leaked, the DOJ has chosen to charge none of them under the FACE Act.
It is very clear that the DOJ has an agenda against pro-life advocates and Christians, and it is weaponizing the FACE Act to do it. President Joe Biden has deliberately bolstered it with radical activists like Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, who “appears only to be prosecuting groups that she doesn’t like, doesn’t agree with.”
Not only are this case and the dozens before it blatant proof that the American justice system now operates on a double standard, but it is also a direct violation of the First Amendment. Nothing the convicted did during their demonstration had to do with anything but the free exercise of their religion and peaceful assembly. If the FACE Act conflicts with either of those clauses, then it has to go, not the First Amendment.
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Last September, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) proposed legislation to repeal the FACE Act, saying, “Biden’s Department of Justice has brazenly weaponized the FACE Act against normal, everyday Americans across the political spectrum, simply because they are pro-life.” Progress on this seems to be currently dead in the water. Hopefully, this case sparks an immediate legislative response.
The United States has become a nation that convicts you for peacefully opposing the surgical sacrifice of babies and the tearing down of actual Satanic idols from our capital buildings. We have just about gone full circle back to paganism, and our own justice department is defending it.
Parker Miller is a 2024 Washington Examiner Winter Fellow.