Arresting officers take stand at FACE Act trial in DC as judge warns religious pro-lifers on-site

August 21 was the third day of witness testimony in the federal case against five pro-life activists — Lauren Handy, Will Goodman, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, and Herb Geraghty. The activists are charged with a felony count of conspiracy against civil rights as well as violations of the FACE act. Each faces a grand total of 11 years in prison.

Four witnesses appeared for the prosecution, including FBI Special Agent Michael Biscardi, who concluded his testimony, begun last Thursday. Two other law enforcement officers who had experience responding to pro-life rescue actions at other facilities also testified.

One of these witnesses, Montgomery County Police Officer Mary Digilio, testified that rescuers sat peacefully in the waiting room when she arrived on the scene at the Silver Spring Family Planning Clinic in Maryland on January 30, 2021. One rescuer, identified as Jonathan Darnel (who has also been indicted for his participation in the Washington Surgi-Clinic rescue, but is being tried separately from this group of defendants), reportedly told Officer Digilio: “The purpose here is not to hurt anybody, we are just here to save lives.”

According to Digilio, defendant Lauren Handy told arresting officers: “If you arrest us, the blood of these children will be on your hands. You’ll be participating in murder.”

The fourth witness to testify today was Washington Surgi-Clinic employee “Tina Smith” (alias). According to this witness, “most” of the Surgi-Clinic’s clients are victims of rape, incest, or sexual abuse, and/or are in difficult medical situations. 

However, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, which analyzes data related to abortion, just “1% [of abortion seekers] indicated that they had been victims of rape, and less than half a percent said they became pregnant as a result of incest.” Though what exactly constitutes a “difficult medical situation” is impossible to define by mere speculation, Guttmacher reports that only one-fourth of abortion seekers cited a potential (not necessarily actual) risk to the mother’s or child’s health as a primary reason for abortion. 

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Even when added together, these groups do not compose a majority of abortion seekers, as Smith implies is the case at her particular abortion facility. And it does not follow logically that there would be a single abortion facility at which these statistics would be entirely flipped on their heads; it doesn’t make sense that what is definitely a minority of abortion seekers nationwide would for some unknown reason constitute the majority of clients at an individual abortion facility.

This same witness claims to be a practicing Catholic. As previously reported by Live Action News, Smith reportedly pulled out her rosary and touted her regular Mass attendance to the rescuers. Today, Smith testified that she told one rescuer that she was “practicing mercy” by working at the facility. 

As defense attorneys attempted to point out, this is not an accurate interpretation of Catholic teaching. The Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly states: “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.”

Judge Kollar-Kotelly apparently took issue with the defense attorneys’ critique of Smith’s alleged faith, stating that it was a matter of opinion, and rebuking one attorney: “You’re here as an attorney, not as a Roman Catholic clergyman.” Furthermore, Kollar-Kotelly reprimanded a religious sister observing the trial for making the sign of the cross.

Observers had been charged by the judge on day one of witness testimony not to pray “visibly,” because to do so was potentially “threatening.”

The prosecution rested this afternoon. All defense attorneys moved to dismiss, with Martin Cannon, attorney for Lauren Handy, arguing that the government had failed to provide evidence of intent to harm, threaten, or injure the people in the waiting room, and had consequently failed to support its case for FACE act violations.

Government attorneys countered that, because defendants physically obstructed the abortion facility’s entrance using their bodies, ropes, and chains (and because one of the facility’s employees injured herself by spraining her ankle during the rescue), defendants had violated the FACE act.

The defense will begin to present its case on August 22.