Four pro-life advocates have been found guilty of violating a federal law protecting abortion centers and now face the possibility of a year in prison thanks to persecution from Joe Biden.
They are the latest pro-life Americans who could face more than a decade in prison because Joe Biden is targeting pro-life people who peacefully protest abortion inside abortion centers. While radical environmentalists and Antifa block roads with sit in and protests and face no jail time, Joe Biden is aggressively trying to put pro-life Americans in federal prison for a year for peaceful sit-ins inside abortion businesses.
After Biden’s DOJ targeted them with bogus charges, late Tuesday a jury convicted Eva Edl, Eva Zastrow, James Zastrow, and Paul Place for their role in a prayerful protest inside a Tennessee abortion center.
The four were found guilty of violating the anti-free speech FACE law after a one-day bench trial in Tennessee, with presiding Middle District of Tennessee Magistrate Judge Chip Frensly agreeing that the four had violated the law. The activists could potentially face one year in prison along with thousands in fines depending upon their sentencing, which is scheduled for July 30.
A total of 11 people were charged by the Biden administration with violating the law. Another 6 face additional trumped up charges that could land them in prison for 11 years while these last four face one year in prison.
The trial began August 9 and the five pro-life advocates were charged with conspiracy and violation of the FACE Act, signed into law in 1994 by former President Bill Clinton.
The FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act prohibits individuals from attempting to injure, intimidate, or interfere (by use of force, threat of force, or physical obstruction) with anyone obtaining or performing an abortion. However none of the pro-life advocates used force or engaged in any criminal behavior – there merely engaged in a sit-in with singing and prayers.
In the previous trial, Lauren Handy, Will Goodman, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, and Herb Geraghty were each found guilty on all counts the Biden administration brought against them for allegedly violating the FACE law.
The pro-lifers on trial conducted a rescue at the Washington Surgi-Clinic operated by the notorious late-term abortionist Cesare Santangelo who was busted by a LiveAction undercover investigator for admitting that he would not help a child with life-saving efforts if he or she survived a late-term abortion. He emphatically stated that a nearby hospital’s efforts to save the life of a child he was trying to abort was “the stupidest thing they could have done.”
Lauren Handy and Herb Geraghty cited those videos as the reason for the rescue and protest at the abortion business because of the concern babies might be left to die. They chained themselves to the entrance of the abortion center in an attempt to stop abortions.
Last March, some of the rescuers currently on trial were given 115 aborted babies by the driver of a medical waste van outside Santangelo’s late-term abortion facility. The babies were well-developed – second and possibly third trimester. Their remains are still in a vault at the D.C. medical examiner’s office.
In October 2020, about two months after the remains were obtained, the nine pro-lifers blocked the entrance of the abortion facility and protesting abortion.
However, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton nominee, would not allow the video to be used as evidence. She also prohibited the defendants from arguing their actions were protected by the First Amendment or were committed in defense of a third person, unborn children.
“In Lauren’s mind, any person she can prevent from going into that clinic is a person whose baby will not be born alive and left to die,” pro-life attorney Martin Cannon said in his closing arguments.
Responding the the verdicts, Thomas More Society, the pro-life legal group that defended Handy, called out the judge and Biden administration for their efforts “to chill pro-life speech and activism.”
“A a federal court jury fraught with bias has delivered the Biden Department of Justice the conviction of several life advocates. The group of peaceful pro-life citizens were charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act along with a conspiracy against ‘rights’ that the United States Supreme Court has not found in the Constitution. The defendants were arrested in March 2022, a year and a half after their alleged actions outside of a Washington, DC abortion facility,” the legal group said.
“Handy and her Thomas More Society defense team will appeal this decision, handed down today in United States District Court for the District of Columbia,” it said.
Martin Cannon, TMS senior attorney, told LifeNews: “We are, of course, disappointed with the outcome. Ms. Handy has been condemned for her efforts to protect the lives of innocent preborn human beings. We are preparing an appeal and will continue to defend those who fight for life against a Biden Department of Justice that seems intent on prosecuting those who decry abortion and present it as it is—the intentional killing of children in utero.”
Pro-Life advocates Joan Andrews Bell, Jonathan Darnell, Paulette Harlow and Jean Marshall had their own trials and were also convicted.
Defense attorneys reportedly planned to use photos and video footage of the remains of the aborted children to help make their case. However, Judge Kollar-Kotelly held a pre-trial conference on August 8 wherein she warned attorneys that she would not allow claims that the defendants were acting in defense of other persons. The attorneys were informed that they were not allowed to use certain words like “infanticide, “abortion,” or “innocent lives.”
