The Biden administration’s Department of Justice is launching another attack on pro-life advocates.
On Monday, the DOJ filed a civil complaint in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio against two organizations — Citizens for a Pro-Life Society and Red Rose Rescue — as well as seven individuals for alleged violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
The individual defendants named in the complaint were Laura Gies, Lauren Handy, Clara McDonald, Monica Miller, Christopher Moscinski, Jay Smith and Audrey Whipple.
The FACE Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton in 1994, penalizes 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, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services.”
The complaint identified two incidents in early June 2021.
In the first incident, which occurred June 4 at the Northeast Ohio Women’s Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Gies, Moscinski, McDonald and Whipple were arrested on a trespassing charge.
The complaint alleged they entered the clinic’s waiting room and handed out roses, encouraging women who were there not to have their unborn children killed.
It said McDonald “forcefully grabbed” a woman and told her not to go through with her abortion.
According to the complaint, while in the waiting room, Gies said, “All of you staff, your paychecks are from blood money of the innocent children you’re ripping to shreds … God has a plan for your life and this is not it. Please, repent! It’s not too late to stop doing what you’re doing!”
The police subsequently arrested all four pro-life advocates and carried them out of the waiting room.
NOWC officials said the disruption forced them to reschedule some of the abortions planned for that day, the complaint said.
The demonstration at the Cuyahoga Falls abortion clinic was followed up by a similar occurrence a day later at the Bedford Heights Surgery Center in Bedford Heights, Ohio.
The complaint said Handy, Miller and Smith entered the center’s parking lot, approached patients waiting in their cars and tried to persuade them not to have abortions.
Smith then entered the building and began passing out brochures to the patients. When the advocates refused to leave, the police were called and they were arrested.
Some of the individuals took part in both incidents, the complaint said.
Now, the DOJ is seeking civil penalties of more than $20,000 against the defendants for their alleged violations of the FACE Act.
In a news release on Monday, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said her office “is committed to enforcing federal law to protect the rights of those who seek and those who provide access to reproductive health services.”
“Obstructing people from accessing reproductive health care and physically obstructing providers from offering it are unlawful,” she said. “Congress passed the FACE Act 30 years ago this month in response to acts of violence, threats of violence and physical obstruction at reproductive health clinics in our country.”
Clarke has been no friend to the pro-life movement. In 2022, she used the FACE Act to prosecute 26 pro-life advocates, according to the Daily Signal.
In 2018, she called crisis pregnancy centers “fake clinics” and said they were “predatory” against black women, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
Make no mistake, today’s decision at the #SCOTUS striking down a CA disclosure requirement for crisis pregnancy centers is part of a coordinated strategy to tear down #RoevWade.
The anti-choice movement will stop at nothing.#EndTheLies #ExposeFakeClincshttps://t.co/IoSTDZavQ6
— Kristen Clarke (@KristenClarkeJD) June 26, 2018
Now, some members of Congress are calling for the FACE Act to be repealed.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas both told Blaze News that the FACE Act needs to be repealed.
“Pro-life activists are being given vastly disproportionate sentences for minor offenses, while arsonists and left-wing rioters go free,” Lee said in the wake of the Ohio indictments.
“It’s time to repeal the FACE Act,” he said.
Should Republicans fight to repeal the FACE Act?
Roy said the administration of President Joe Biden has spent more time incriminating the pro-life movement than taking care of actual crime.
“It’s ridiculous that Biden’s Justice Department is going after pro-life Americans but letting criminals and dangerous illegal aliens roam free on the streets,” he told Blaze News.
The congressman sent a letter to Clarke in February demanding that the DOJ release data on how it has prosecuted Americans under the FACE Act, the Daily Signal reported.
The letter requested information on how many FACE Act cases the department has brought since the law was enacted, how many FACE Act cases have been filed due to incidents or attacks at abortion providers, how many FACE Act cases have been filed due to incidents or attacks at pregnancy resource centers and places of religious worship.
Blaze News indicated the DOJ has yet to turn over the requested data.
As Lee and Roy argue, the solution should be to get rid of the FACE Act altogether.
That’s not to say that pro-life advocates should be free to attack women at abortion clinics. Far from it.
Rather, they should be able to freely protest outside of abortion clinics and talk to women about abortion without fear of prosecution.
“House Republicans must repeal the FACE Act immediately and stop Biden’s pro-abortion crusade,” Roy said.
Congress should do whatever it can to protect innocent lives.
