Biden DOJ charges 8 more pro-life activists with FACE Act violations

The Department of Justice has charged eight more individuals with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for involvement in a pro-life “rescue” at an abortion facility in 2020.

According to the charges, the eight pro-life individuals — Calvin Zastrow, Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Caroline Davis, Joel Curry, Justin Phillips, Eva Edl, and Eva Zastrow — allegedly blocked the door of an abortion business on August 27, 2020, in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

The indictment says the individuals aimed to prevent the Sterling Heights facility from committing abortions and that Gallagher advertised the group’s activism on social media in addition to live-streaming the event. A pro-life activist who has not been charged is said to have recorded the incident while stating that the group was “going over to stand in front of the door” and “interpose.” The indictment also alleges that the eight defendants used physical obstruction to intimidate the abortion facility employees and patients.

Idoni and Edl were also charged with allegedly blocking an abortion business entrance in April 2021 in Saginaw, Michigan, and with alleged intimidation of employees and patients there.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan are prosecuting the case, which comes less than two months after the acquittal of another pro-life activist who had been charged with violating the FACE Act.

That activist, Mark Houck, was arrested at gunpoint by 15-20 FBI agents in front of his young children in September 2022 in connection to an incident in which he is said to have shoved a Planned Parenthood abortion facility escort who may have broken escort protocol to harass Houck’s 12-year-old son. Houck was acquitted of all charges on January 30, 2023.

According to the Daily Signal, Biden’s DOJ charged 26 pro-life activists with FACE Act violations in 2022, but failed to charge a single pro-abortion activist with FACE Act violations last year despite numerous attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers, which are also protected by the FACE Act. In January 2023, the DOJ did finally indict two pro-abortion activists who attacked pro-life facilities in Florida.

Edl is the survivor of a World War II communist prisoner-of-war concentration camp. After escaping that camp and coming to the United States, she began to fight for the right to life for all human beings. She has referred to abortion clinics as “the death camps of America.”

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