‘Conspiracy against rights’: How the DOJ is ‘twisting’ an old law to harshly penalize pro-lifers

Americans have been watching as pro-life activists are sent to prison in record numbers, with more than 12 sentenced in just the last two months. They have been convicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, but some of them have faced an additional charge that is new for pro-life activists — the felony Conspiracy Against Rights charge.

The Conspiracy Against Rights law prohibits two or more people from “conspiring to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States…” and yet, as Live Action News previously reported, the law “does not require, as an element, the commission of an overt act.”

Thomas More Society’s Senior Counsel, Steve Crampton, told the Daily Caller that “for the first time in history,” the Biden administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has added these charges to FACE Act prosecutions. He said the that law, enacted in 1870, was created to protect African-American voters. As Forbes has noted:

Section 241 was initially passed after the Civil War as part of the Enforcement Act of 1870 as a way to punish members of the Ku Klux Klan and other Southerners from intimidating or harassing Black voters for exercising their new voting rights, but has since been used more broadly to thwart attempts to interfere in federal elections.

Crampton believes the Biden DOJ has “twisted” the law to target pro-lifers who are exercising their First Amendment rights. In addition, there is no fundamental, constitutional right to abortion, as shown by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Association decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But this law is being used to inflict harsher sentences on pro-lifers. On page 65 of the Dobbs majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, he writes (emphases added):

We therefore hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives… procuring an abortion is not a fundamental constitutional right because such a right has no basis in the Constitution’s text or in our Nation’s history.

READ: South Carolina pro-life activist sentenced to jail time under FACE Act

Prosecutions of pro-life individuals constitute roughly 97% of all FACE Act cases. The Daily Caller reported that 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.

WARNING: Images below may be disturbing to readers.

“In less than four years, Biden’s DOJ has accounted for over a quarter of all FACE prosecutions and approximately 24% of cases targeting pro-life activists, the data demonstrates,” wrote Eireann Van Natta for the Daily Caller.

Seventy-five-year-old Paulette Harlow was sentenced to 24 months in prison for allegedly violating both FACE and the Conspiracy Against Rights law when she participated in pro-life activism at the Washington Surgi-Clinic in October 2020. It’s an abortion business where abortions are committed very late into pregnancy (D.C. has no abortion limits), as is evident by the bodies found in medical waste bins outside the facility in March 2022. Lauren Handy, considered the leader of the pro-life protest that day, received almost five years in prison.

The Daily Caller pointed out that the actions in the latest protests do not appear to fit the punishments.

In two examples, Van Natta pointed out that J. Fred Hart, Jr. parked two empty trucks outside an abortion business in 1997, blocking access to the parking lot. The bomb squad and arson experts were called in to examine the trucks and Hart was sentenced to four years probation with home detention the first year, 200 hours of community service, mental health counseling, and a fee of $50.

Donald Hertz, however, called and threatened to kill an abortionist and his family members in 2010. Despite this, under the Obama DOJ, Hertz was only sentenced to five years of probation.

Crampton told The Daily Caller that the punishments for violating FACE are harsher than ever before. The addition of conspiracy charges can further increase those punishments.

The DOJ put a pro-life grandmother in jail for protesting the killing of preborn children. Please take 30-seconds to TELL CONGRESS: STOP THE DOJ FROM TARGETING PRO-LIFE AMERICANS.