In February, the Justice Department announced a federal indictment in a case that could send abortion protesters to prison, reported the Washington Post.
They were charged under the Freedom of Access to
Clinic Entrances Act, a 1994 law that Attorney General Merrick Garland has
called a key tool in the Biden administration’s efforts to protect reproductive
rights in the face of tightening legal restrictions for women seeking
abortions.
Some conservative groups, Republican lawmakers and
defense attorneys have rebuked Garland, accusing the department of going too
far in aggressively pursuing members of antiabortion groups who have not
necessarily been dangerous. They say authorities are ignoring similar threats
and vandalism at Catholic churches and reproductive health centers that counsel
women against abortion.
But federal authorities and abortion rights groups
said harassment, stalking and intimidation at abortion clinics have escalated
since the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case in June 2022
overturned Roe v. Wade — the court’s 1973 decision recognizing the
federal right to an abortion. That behavior, they argue, has made the Justice
Department’s push for federal charges that come with harsh prison penalties
more urgent.
Even as he and his aides have touted the prosecutions as a response to the Dobbs decision, Garland has defended the agency’s approach, saying the Justice Department and FBI are investigating disruptive acts on both sides.
“We prosecute without respect to ideology,” he said
at a Senate hearing in the spring, “but we do focus on the most violent acts,
the most dangerous actors and the cases most likely to lead to danger to most
Americans.”
Federal authorities are prosecuting several
allegations of extremely dangerous behavior at abortion clinics that go well
beyond being disruptive. Among the examples are cases involving charges that a
man threatened to burn down an Ohio abortion clinic last year, that a man set
fire to an Illinois clinic in January and that three men conspired to firebomb
a California clinic in March.
The indictments do not link the men in those cases
to organized antiabortion groups. The defendant in the Illinois case, Tyler W.
Massengill, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in August to 10 years in prison
and ordered to pay $1.45 million in restitution to the clinic.
Since President Biden took office in 2021, the Justice
Department has brought 2o criminal prosecutions and one civil case under the
FACE Act against a total of 46 defendants, according to federal officials, with
all but one of the cases involving charges for disruptions at abortion clinics.
That one exception is a criminal case against four abortion rights activists
accused of spray-painting threatening messages last year at three Florida
reproductive health centers that counsel patients against abortion.
Decrying what they view as an imbalance, Rep. Chip
Roy (R-Tex.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced legislation in September to
repeal the law. Roy accused the Justice Department of having “brazenly
weaponized the FACE Act against normal, everyday Americans across the political
spectrum, simply because they are pro-life.”
“I certainly believe the undercurrent to all of this
was a pushback on Dobbs,” said Bradley Friedman, an attorney for Chester
Gallagher, 74, one of eight people charged in the Michigan case involving the
antiabortion protesters who refused to move. “All this is, is criminal
trespass. If the owner of a business does not want someone on their property,
they can ask them to leave.”
Prosecutors said the protesters in Michigan blocked
a patient, an employee and the clinic’s owner from accessing the building. Two
of the eight defendants are facing an additional count of allegedly obstructing
another Michigan abortion facility in April 2021.
Obstructions at clinics across the United States
rose from 45 in 2021 to 287 last year, while stalking incidents rose from eight
to 81, according to the National Abortion Federation’s annual survey. There were also increases in bomb threats,
burglaries and assaults.
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