DOJ charges pro-lifer with violating FACE Act in Philadelphia

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a federal lawsuit against a pro-life activist who barricaded himself inside an abortion facility in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in August 2021, forcing the abortion business to close early.

Matthew Connolly has been charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act. According to the DOJ, 44 clients at the abortion business needed to reschedule their appointments due to the facility’s early closure.

“The defendant engaged in conduct calculated to shut down a reproductive health clinic for an entire day, forcing the evacuation of the clinic’s patients and obstructing access to reproductive health services. The FACE Act prohibits conduct intended to interfere with access to reproductive healthcare,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Justice Department is committed to enforcing the FACE Act to ensure that providers can continue to deliver legal reproductive health services and that patients can obtain them.”

Connolly is a member of the Red Rose Rescue, a pro-life activist group. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, he had been arrested at least eight times in four different states, and was convicted four times, before this 2021 incident. Notably, though he was forcibly removed from the abortion facility in this instance, the police let him go without charges.

This is similar to other stories of the DOJ federally charging pro-lifers when those individuals had either not been charged by local police, or were charged with misdemeanors. Some pro-lifers see this federal lawsuit against Connolly as yet another case of the Biden administration targeting pro-life activists.

READ: New York AG to charge Red Rose rescuers, calls them ‘bigoted zealots’

“This lawsuit against Matthew Connolly is another instance of a weaponized Department of Justice obsessed with persecuting nonviolent pro-lifers,” said Monica Miller, director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society.

With the charge, Connolly joins a growing number of pro-lifers who have received FACE Act convictions. Recently, pro-lifer Bevelyn Williams was sentenced to serve a shocking 41 months in federal prison for allegedly violating the FACE Act outside a New York Planned Parenthood, even though she was not charged with “conspiracy against rights” like other jailed pro-lifers.

Though there have been numerous instances of violence and vandalism against pro-life organizations and centers, very few of those cases have resulted in prosecutions, even though pregnancy centers and churches are also supposed to be protected under the FACE Act. As Live Action News previously reported:

Prosecutions of pro-life individuals constitute roughly 97% of all FACE Act cases… from 1994 to 2024, there were 205 cases brought against pro-lifers and just six against pro-abortion activists. At least 55 of those were prosecuted by the Biden DOJ, only five of which involved attacks by abortion advocates — despite FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony that 75% of all abortion-related attacks following the overturning of Roe were carried out by abortion supporters against pro-life organizations.

A judge will next schedule a hearing in this lawsuit against Connolly.

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