How Roe’s reversal triggered the Biden-Harris DOJ’s persecution of peaceful pro-lifers

Beginning in early 2022, the Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) began waging a campaign of retaliation against pro-lifers — with the apparent goal of frightening them into silence. In May of 2021, the United States Supreme Court announced it would take on the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — which had the potential to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to make their own laws surrounding abortion. The pro-abortion Biden-Harris DOJ sensed the very real threat to Roe, and turned its anger upon pro-lifers seeking to prevent abortions through on-site activism at abortion facilities.

The DOJ initiated FBI raids and dug years into the past to charge and arrest peaceful protesters.

The Supreme Court first heard oral arguments in Dobbs on December 1, 2021. While the case was still in the hands of the justices in late March 2022, a monumental and heartbreaking event took place that held the potential to expose the reality of abortion to millions of Americans and change hearts and minds across the nation.

Five days later, the wave of retaliation efforts against pro-life activists began.

At a Glance

• In March 2022, pro-lifers found the bodies of five babies aborted late in pregnancy. Five days later, nine pro-lifers were arrested for a protest that took place over a year earlier.

• In May 2022, the draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked, showing that the Supreme Court was likely to overturn Roe v Wade. Immediately, pro-abortion advocates began carrying out violent attacks against pro-life organizations and churches.

• In September and October of 2022, the FBI staged armed raids at the homes of two pro-lifers whose children were present. Multiple pro-lifers have since been arrested and jailed for peaceful protests that took place as far back as three years prior. Arrests have continued into 2024.

• In December 2022, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta admitted that Dobbs had increased “the urgency” of the DOJ’s efforts to ‘enforce’ “the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.”

The Five

After 49 years, Roe v. Wade was on the chopping block, putting the abortion industry and its allies on edge.

WARNING: Images of abortion victims below.

On March 25, 2022, less than four months after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs, pro-life activists went to Washington Surgi-Clinic, an abortion facility in Washington D.C., where there are no restrictions on abortion. Terrisa Bukovinac, founder and executive director of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), and Lauren Handy, PAAU director of activism, were at the facility “to engage in anti-abortion advocacy.”

When they arrived, they saw a truck from Curtis Bay Medical Waste Services parked outside and noticed two large boxes marked with biohazard symbols. The truck’s driver confirmed that the boxes were from the abortion facility and gave the two activists permission to take the boxes. Inside were the remains of 110 aborted babies, mostly of first-trimester age. However, there were also the bodies of five babies in the boxes, whom experts have stated were likely old enough to have survived outside the womb.

One of the babies, whom activists named “Harriet,” had an incision on the back of her neck that experts believe may have indicated the possible use of the brutal and federally banned D&X abortion procedure (more commonly known as “partial-birth” abortion).

The pro-life activists ensured that the bodies were documented through photographic evidence, and arranged a funeral Mass for all 115 babies. The 110 younger children were given a respectful burial. The pro-lifers then searched for an independent pathologist to confirm how the five older babies might have died; they called the D.C. police to have the bodies picked up so their deaths could be investigated.

On March 29, arrangements were made for the Metropolitan Washington D.C. Police homicide unit to pick up the five babies from Handy’s apartment for forensic examination. Attorney Steve Cooley penned a letter that day to Chief Medical Examiner Francisco J. Diaz and Police Captain Carols Heraud of the Investigative Services Bureau Homicide Branch, stating, “I have been contacted by an entity that very recently came into possession of … fetuses. […] It appears some of the fetuses were a result of late-term abortion(s) or possibly live birth abortions.” It was less than 24 hours later that the arrests of peaceful pro-lifers began.

Knowing that the true story of these babies may sway opinions on abortion to the pro-life side, the media created a false narrative regarding activist Lauren Handy, claiming, “Officers were called to” her home and that “[p]olice had found five fetuses” in her apartment — deceptively leaving out the fact that it was Handy and the pro-lifers themselves who had called police.

The images of the five babies obtained from the Washington Surgi-Clinic — Harriet, Christopher X, Angel, Phoenix, and Holly — were kept under wraps by mainstream media outlets.

WUSA9 reporter Bruce Leshan, however, noted that the D.C. police planned to “continue to look at how the fetuses ended up [at the apartment] but not when or how they were aborted.”

The arrests begin

The combination of Dobbs reaching the Supreme Court and the discovery of the five babies threatened to expose abortion for what it is — the direct, intentional, violent, and unnecessary killing of innocent children — and the DOJ quickly began ramping up arrests and prosecution of pro-lifers in an effort to silence them and shut down pro-life activism.

Just five days after the babies were found and less than 24 hours after attorney Cooley sent the letter to Diaz and Heraud regarding the discovery of the babies, three pro-lifers — Iraq war veteran Jonathan Darnel (in Virginia), and John Hinshaw and Jay Smith (in New York) — each had their homes raided by the FBI at 5:00 am on March 30, 2022.

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney General Matthew Graves for the District of Columbia announced a two-count indictment, charging Darnel, Hinshaw, and Smith, along with Lauren Handy and five other pro-life activists — Joan Bell, William Goodman, Paulette Harlow, Heather Idoni, and Jean Marshall, — with Federal Civil Rights Conspiracy and Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) offenses for pro-life activism that had taken place at the very same abortion facility — the Washington Surgi-Clinic — nearly 18 months earlier on October 22, 2020.

Six months later, a tenth pro-lifer, Herb Geraghty, was also charged for that protest. Each defendant faced 11 years in prison and up to $260,000 in fines.

It was just the beginning.

The DOJ targets pro-life activists

The FACE Act was enacted in 1994 and “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services… or other federal criminal statutes where arson, firearms, and threats were also used.” The focus of FACE Act prosecutions has historically been on individuals who acted violently. Under FACE, activists are allowed to peacefully protest, sing, pray, hold signs, and hand out information to individuals entering the facility. Over 30 years, 205 FACE Act cases were brought against pro-lifers while just six were brought against pro-abortion activists. About a quarter of those cases — 55 — were brought against pro-lifers by the Biden-Harris DOJ in under four years.

Congressman Chip Roy criticized the DOJ, saying, “This means that nearly 92% of all Biden-Harris FACE Act cases were brought against pro-life demonstrators, despite over 285 churches and 94 pregnancy resource centers and pro-life groups being attacked and vandalized since May 2022.” Catholic Vote’s Violence Tracker now stands at 302 Catholic churches attacked since May 2022, many of which included spray-painted pro-abortion messaging.

It was just five weeks after the arrest of Handy and the other eight pro-lifers, that the Supreme Court suffered an unheard-of ethics breach when someone from the inside leaked the draft opinion of the court’s decision in Dobbs, which indicated that it would overturn Roe.

Immediately, abortion advocates began targeting pro-life organizations with vandalism, including firebombing. One of the worst attacks against pro-lifers took place on the evening of June 6 or in the early morning hours of June 7, 2022, when CompassCare’s facility in Buffalo, New York, was firebombed (watch news video). At least 29 states plus Washington, D.C., experienced pro-abortion attacks on pro-life organizations and churches within just a few months of the information leak.

Pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) were also targeted by local governments that have worked to delegitimize the organizations, including in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where an ordinance was considered to keep law enforcement from investigating abortion-related crimes, put anti-free speech buffer zones around abortion facilities, and label PRCs as purveyors of misinformation deserving of heavy scrutiny.

More raids and arrests followed.

FBI raids homes to arrest pro-life fathers

On September 23, 2022, around 6:45 a.m., approximately 20+ FBI agents arrived in 15 units fully equipped in SWAT gear with firearms at the home of Mark Houck, a pro-life father of seven. Houck is the founder of a men’s ministry and is a regular sidewalk counselor at Planned Parenthood in downtown Philadelphia. The charge against him was one that involved a Planned Parenthood escort who had approached Houck’s young son, making vulgar comments. Houck pushed the escort away from his child. Neither the district attorney nor the Philadelphia Police Department had any interest in prosecuting Houck, but the escort sued. When the court dates arrived, the escort was continuously a no-show — and ultimately, the case was dismissed by April 2022.

Five days after that dismissal, the FBI was at Houck’s door, guns drawn, with his terrified children screaming.

“[It was] an act of terror designed to humiliate, intimidate and instill fear in us and they’ve effectively done that with our children to this day, but [to] instill fear in pro-life America, right? Because this is now becoming an overreach of government,” Houck told Live Action founder and president Lila Rose in an interview.

Less than two weeks later, on October 5, 2022, FBI agents swarmed the home of another pro-life activist — Paul Vaughn —  who was handcuffed on the porch of his home in front of his wife and children by FBI agents armed with assault rifles. “They traumatized me and my children intentionally,” said Vaughn’s wife. “We will never forget this.”

She told Townhall that the FBI did not provide a warrant for his arrest or tell her where they were taking him.

“For over six hours, no one knew where I was and why I was kidnapped from my home at gunpoint,” said Vaughn. “It took a good attorney six hours to be able to break through the bureaucracy and find the people who know what was going on.”

The arrests pile up

Additional pro-life activists were also arrested that same week in October. Vaughn had been one of 11 pro-lifers present at the Carafem abortion facility in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, in March of 2021. They had entered the hallway of the building, where they sang hymns, read scripture, and prayed. More than a year later, in October 2022, among those arrested for that activism were Coleman Boyd, Eva Edl, Chester Gallagher, Dennis Green, Heather Idoni, Paul Place, Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, and James Zastrow.

On October 14, 2022, Herb Geraghty was indicted on federal charges under the FACE Act stemming from the rescue action that had taken place at the Washington Surgi-Clinic abortion facility in Washington, D.C., on October 22, 2020. And in December 2022, Bevelyn Beatty Williams and Edmee Chavannes, both longtime pro-life activists, were charged with violating the FACE Act at a Planned Parenthood facility in Manhattan, New York, in June 2020, more than two and a half years earlier.

“What’s interesting about Bev’s case,” attorney Aaron Mysliwiec told Live Action News, “is the incident occurred in June of 2020 and the government did not prosecute that until after Dobbs in 2022. Based on the trial evidence, two years went by and nobody from the Southern District of New York’s prosecution team — including FBI agents — nobody even talked to the Planned Parenthood in Manhattan during those two years. It was not until a few weeks after the Dobbs decision that they began investigating. NYPD was on the scene in June of 2020. Planned Parenthood had lawyers in June of 2020” (emphasis added).

The Biden-Harris DOJ dove deep into the past, as far back as three years (so far), and began indicting pro-lifers on charges of violating the FACE Act. More indictments came just this year.

On May 20, 2024, Handy, Jay Smith, and Dr. Monica Miller were sued by the Biden-Harris DOJ for activism that had taken place on June 5, 2021, in Ohio. Handy and Miller had been arrested that day but the charges against them had been dropped. Smith hadn’t been arrested at all — yet now, the DOJ was suing all three of them.

That same day, Fr. Fidelis (Christomer Moscinski), Clara McDonald, Audrey Whipple, and Laura Gies were sued by the Biden-Harris DOJ in relation to pro-life activism that took place on June 4, 2021, in Ohio. They had been arrested in 2021, found guilty of misdemeanor trespass, and fined. The case was done — but three years later, the DOJ came back and sued them after the fall of Roe v. Wade.

The same is true for Boyd, Edl, Gallagher, Geraghty, Green, Houck, Idoni, Place, Vaughn, and the Zastrows. They were all indicted about a year or more after their activism, and only after Roe had fallen.

DOJ admits it is targeting pro-lifers

From March 2022 through August 2024, at least 49 FACE Act violation charges were brought against more than 30 pro-lifers carrying out common protest efforts. Meanwhile, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that 70% of the abortion-related attacks since the draft opinion was leaked were carried out by abortion supporters against pro-lifers.

The DOJ even admitted to targeting pro-life activists through the FACE Act in response to the overturning of Roe. As reported by The Daily Signal, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in December of 2022 that Dobbs increased “the urgency” of the DOJ’s efforts to ‘enforce’ “the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.”

All but two of the arrested pro-lifers who have since gone to trial have been found guilty of violating the FACE Act, Conspiracy Against Rights, or both, and many are currently incarcerated, with the longest sentence set at just under five years.

Meanwhile, only seven pro-abortion activists have faced charges for attacks against pro-life organizations since the wave of attacks began in May of 2022 — less than a quarter of the number of pro-lifers charged (despite the FBI director’s testimony of majority pro-abortion violence). Most pro-abortion perpetrators of threats and vandalism were sentenced to no more than one year and one day in prison. To date, just one man, Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury, was sentenced to more; he received seven and a half years for firebombing a building occupied by a pro-life organization on May 8, 2022. Roychowdhury said he was upset that Roe v. Wade might be overturned.

In some cases, the DOJ seemed to be ignoring the attacks, forcing pro-life organizations to take investigating threats into their own hands. “It is ridiculous that as pro-life citizens we are forced to do the job of both the FBI and DOJ,” said CompassCare’s CEO James Harden in a statement to The Washington Times. “The FBI refused to investigate so we hired private investigators. The DOJ refuses to indict, so we brought FACE charges.”

In late February 2023, Attorney General Merrick Garland testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee as pro-life senators asked him why there have been numerous prosecutions of pro-lifers for violations of the FACE Act while pro-abortion attacks against pro-life organizations and churches have largely gone unpunished.

“[In] 2022, for the first couple of months of 2023, the DOJ has announced charges against 34 individuals for blocking access to or vandalizing abortion clinics and there have been over 81 reported attacks on pregnancy centers, 130 attacks on Catholic churches since the leak of the Dobbs decision [at that time],” said Senat0r Mike Lee (R-Utah). “And only two individuals have been charged. So how do you explain this disparity by reference to anything other than the politicization of what’s happening there?”

Garland’s response was stunning. He claimed that the reason pro-lifers are being charged with FACE Act violations more often than pro-abortion activists is because pro-abortion activists targeted pro-lifers “at night in the dark.”

“I will say that you’re quite right,” said Garland. “There are many more prosecutions with respect to the blocking of the abortion centers, but that is generally because they are those actions are taken with photography at the time during the daylight and seeing the person who did it is quite easy. Those who are attacking the pregnancy resource centers, which is a hard thing to do, are doing this at night in the dark.” He added, “We have put full resources on this. … But, these people who are doing this are clever and are doing it in secret. And I’m convinced that the FBI is trying to find them with urgency.”

Yet, CompassCare, a pregnancy center in upstate New York, found itself filing a lawsuit against four individuals who firebombed its building after the FBI managed to arrest just one of them. After filing the lawsuit, CompassCare was able to gain access to the video footage (above) of the attack that had been in possession of the FBI.

“Unjust and manipulative” indictments

It’s been an uphill battle for pro-life organizations that have faced vandalism and violence simply because they help supply families in need with material goods, emotional support, and resources as a life-affirming option other than abortion. And their fellow pro-lifers attempting to spare women and children from abortion have been arrested and jailed for carrying out traditional sit-in protests using chains and prayer. Houck had the FBI arrive at his home with guns drawn just days after the district attorney had dismissed the charges against him.

Most of the charged pro-lifers have stood their ground despite facing imprisonment, including Houck. Houck was offered a plea deal  — zero to six months if he pled guilty to violating the FACE Act. Facing 11 years if convicted, plus a $350,000 fine, it could have been easy for Houck to take that plea deal, but he and his wife refused. “We need to do this for the pro-life movement,” explained Houck. “… Regardless of what’s best for our family, we need to do this for the greater good, for the common good.”

His wife, Ryan-Marie, added, “God didn’t bring us to this moment to just bail out.” Houck was eventually acquitted of the charges against him, as was Edmee Chavannes — but the others have not been so fortunate.

Lauren Handy received the longest sentencing of the pro-life activists thus far, at nearly five years, and Bevelyn Williams received nearly three and a half years in federal prison away from her young daughter.

From prison, while he was still awaiting his sentencing, Will Goodman wrote, “I write this meditation as I sit in my cramped and chilly cell on the fifth floor of the Alexandria Adult Detention Center in Virginia.”The crime: peacefully kneeling down inside the waiting room of an extremely late-term child killing facility in Washington DC, and then silently praying there as a witness to the value of each human being. A witness of conscience, charity, truth… I’m locked down here along with 7 other peaceful rescuers who are awaiting federal sentencing for our non-violent direct action, i.e., a simple ‘sit-in’ style protest, or rather, a rescue mission that we had at the DC facility which commits ‘live birth’ abortions….” Goodman was eventually sentenced to 27 months in prison with credit for nine months of time served.

He continued, “Why is this happening? Due to a very unjust and manipulative Department of Justice indictment, we were all unfairly convicted of, not one, but TWO ‘violent’ federal felonies. (!?!) The radical support of baby killing by some in our federal government have brought all of us to this point….”

Donald Trump has said that if elected to the presidency, he would pardon the jailed pro-lifers. If Vice-President Kamala Harris is elected, the appeals the pro-lifers have filed could have the potential to make it to the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, peaceful pro-lifers — even grandmothers with significant health issues — sit in federal prison.

“Paulette is one of many peaceful pro-lifers who Joe Biden has rounded up, sometimes with SWAT teams, and thrown them in jail,” Trump said in June as he spoke at the Faith and Freedom Coalition, regarding 75-year-old pro-life activist Paulette Harlow.  “Many people are in jail over this. … We’re going to get that taken care of immediately — [on the] first day.”

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