D.C. Jury Finds Pro-Life Activists Guilty of Violating FACE Act in Abortion Clinic Blockade

A Washington, DC, jury found five pro-life activists guilty of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act on Tuesday for seeking to prevent abortions by blocking the entrance of an abortion clinic in 2020. 

The jury found pro-life activists Lauren Handy, Heather Idoni, William Goodman, Herb Geraghty, and John Hinshaw guilty of conspiracy against rights and violating the FACE Act. The activists could face a potential “maximum sentence of 11 years in prison, three years of supervised released, and a fine of up to $350,000,” according to the Department of Justice. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sanjay Patel argued Handy, who is now an activist with the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), designed the “invasion” into the Washington Surgi-Clinic in October of 2020, an abortion facility infamous for late-term abortions. According to WUSA 9, Handy and the other activists gained access to the clinic by scheduling an appointment under the name “Hazel Jenkins.”  

“Some simply kneeled and prayed at Santangelo’s facility, some passed out pro-life literature and counseled abortion-minded women, and others roped and chained themselves together inside the facility,” according the Handy’s attorneys from the Thomas More Society, a pro-life law firm that has represented other pro-life activists like Mark Houck and David Daleiden. 

In March of 2022, the DOJ charged Handy and eight others with “conspiracy against rights and a [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances] Act offense.” The DOJ charges occurred the same month that Handy and PAAU’s founder and former executive director Terrisa Bukovinac allegedly discovered the remains of approximately 115 aborted babies in a waste box from the Washington Surgi-Clinic, five of whom they say may have been partially aborted or killed after birth in violation of federal law. D.C. police previously told Breitbart News that the deaths of the five babies are still under investigation. 

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“Attorneys with the Thomas Moore Society…wanted to make the argument that [Handy] was acting out of a desire to defend unborn children. U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, however, said in her decision on Aug. 7 that the claim was not ‘legally viable’ and that she would not condone citizens donning a ‘vigilante’s hood,” according to the Daily Caller.

The Thomas Moore Society has noted that Dr. Cesare Santangelo’s Washington Surgi-Center “has long been the subject of controversy and suspicion, with reason to believe that the late-term abortionist was leaving born-alive infants without care. This is integral to understanding Lauren’s motive that day in October 2020.”

“In 2013, Lauren viewed an undercover video published by Live Action, exposing Santangelo. That video left a lasting impact on her and ignited her passion for pro-life advocacy,” according to her attorneys. “She quit college, moved across the country, and dedicated her life’s work to advocating against abortion. Lauren could never forget the grim reality she had seen and heard on that undercover video, and the horrible live-birth abortions—i.e., the refusal of care after the child survives an abortion—she reasonably believes occur inside Santangelo’s abortion facility.”

Her attorneys are referring to Live Action’s undercover video of Santangelo, in which he was allegedly recorded saying he would not assist a baby that is born alive in a botched abortion.

“We would do things – we would – we would not help it,” he told an undercover investigator in 2013:

Let’s say. We wouldn’t – we wouldn’t uh, intubate, let’s say. Ok? Yeah, we wouldn’t do any extra – you know? … It would be, you know, uh – a person that would be – a terminal person in the hospital, let’s say – that had cancer. You know? You wouldn’t do any extra procedures to help that person survive.

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The Thomas More Society released a statement following the verdict saying they plan to appeal the court’s decision.

“We are, of course, disappointed with the outcome. Ms. Handy has been condemned for her efforts to protect the lives of innocent preborn human beings,” Thomas More Society senior counsel Martin Cannon said. “We are preparing an appeal and will continue to defend those who fight for life against a Biden Department of Justice that seems intent on prosecuting those who decry abortion and present it as it is—the intentional killing of children in utero.”

“In an unexpected twist, the Court found that because the violation of FACE—in this case—was a crime of ‘violence,’ all five defendants must be immediately incarcerated. So, the defendants were led out of the courtroom by an army of U.S. Marshals,” senior counsel Steve Crampton added. “This is an outrage, and the one thing the defendants had really agreed upon was to remain non-violent. The real violence is what happens during the abortion procedure.”

PAAU, a left-wing pro-life group which currently employs Handy as its director of activism, released statements on Twitter stating that they believe they. have “strong ground to appeal and feel optimistic that a higher court will later rule in their favor.”

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“This may even go all the way to the Supreme Court,” PAAU said. “In the meantime, our hero rescuers await sentencing. This isn’t the outcome we hoped for, but it also isn’t a loss! The rescue continues through court and in jail.”

“Some pro-life rescuers are trained in providing support after abortion to incarcerated people, and others bring their sidewalk counseling skills into the prison to convince inmates to choose life for their children,” PAAU added. “The work continues and more lives WILL be saved.”

The guilty verdict led to an outcry from members of the pro-life movement, who called the trial a “sham trial.”

Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action, released a statement slamming Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly for refusing to admit its Santangelo investigation video into evidence.

“This is also the same judge who recently suggested that the 13th Amendment to the constitution’s ban on ‘involuntary servitude’ may confer a right to abortion, comparing the beauty of pregnancy and motherhood with the horror of slavery,” Rose said.

“From the beginning, This trial has been a sham with a completely biased pro-abortion judge who has made a mockery of our justice system. This decision will be appealed, and we demand it be overturned. These activists are heroes, and the Department of Justice has acted capriciously and illegitimately,” she added in part.  “These charges stem from the FACE Act, which exists to target and chill the free speech of pro-life Americans.  Their acts of bravery to protect innocent human life from notorious D.C. abortionist Cesare Santangelo have been punished by the corrupt DOJ.”

One of the nation’s leading pro-life organizations, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, also issued a statement, calling Tuesday a “shameful day for a nation founded on unalienable rights, first and foremost including life.”

“Instead of being recognized for their heroism, the most pro-abortion administration in history has weaponized the full power of the federal government against them – treating them like terrorists and threatening them with as many as 11 years in prison, all while the authorities turn a blind eye to Santangelo’s atrocities,” SBA Pro-Life America said in part.

“The extreme pro-abortion bias on display throughout this trial – for instance, donors to abortion giant Planned Parenthood permitted to serve on the jury – shows that they were never going to get a fair hearing in Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s court. Wherever one stands on abortion, we should all be able to agree this is wrong and un-American,” the group continued.

Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, the DOJ has notably charged more pro-life activists under the FACE Act than pro-abortion activists, despite the fact that FBI director Christopher Wray admitted last November that approximately 70 percent of abortion-related threats of violence in the United States since the Dobbs decision have been against pro-life groups.

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta also admitted in December in remarks at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s 65th Anniversary that the end of Roe v.Wade dialed up “the urgency” of the DOJ’s work, including the “enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.” 

The case is United States v. Handy, No. 1:22-cr-96 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.