House Republican lawmakers discussed repealing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act on Wednesday after hearing testimony alleging the law has been weaponized against pro-life protesters.
The FACE Act, which has been federal law for 30 years, imposes harsher prison sentences for people who obstruct access to abortion clinics or pro-life pregnancy resource centers. However, under President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ), the law has almost exclusively been used to convict pro-life demonstrators.
Rep. Chip Roy introduced legislation to repeal the FACE Act in 2023, but the bill failed to make it out of the Judiciary Committee. If a repeal effort were to pass the House, it would need to overcome the filibuster in the Senate by garnering support from seven Democrats in the upcoming session. The effort has not gotten support from any Democratic lawmakers.
On Wednesday, Dec. 18, lawmakers heard testimony about the alleged targeting of pro-life activists in a House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government hearing.
Unequal enforcement against pro-life advocates
Roy, who chairs the subcommittee, noted during the hearing that the Biden DOJ brought 25 FACE Act cases against more than 50 offenders.
Only two of those cases were against pro-abortion activists who vandalized pro-life pregnancy resource centers despite the numerous attacks following the Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade. The remainder have been invoked against pro-life demonstrators.
More than a dozen pro-life activists, several of whom are elderly and in poor health, are either in prison or awaiting sentencing for FACE Act violations.
Lauren Handy, 31, who was given the longest sentence, is serving four years and nine months in prison. Other activists serving at least two years include 75-year-old Paulette Harlow and 74-year-old Jean Marshall. The oldest activist convicted under Biden’s tenure is 89-year-old Eva Edl, who is a survivor of a communist concentration camp in the former Yugoslavia and is currently awaiting sentencing.
“Unequal application of the law is not truly law,” Roy said. “It is tyranny imposed on those who didn’t have the power by those who do have it. That’s contrary to everything we believe as Americans.”
Paul Vaughn, who was convicted of violating the FACE Act for his role in a March 2021 protest at an abortion clinic in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, testified at the hearing that he peacefully prayed but never personally blocked anyone from entering the clinic. Others at the demonstration engaged in a nonviolent sit-in in front of the clinic doors and were also convicted.
“I did nothing that was outside my constitutionally protected free speech and religious freedom,” Vaughn said. “I did nothing that day that I’ve not done many times since [the FACE Act] was passed in 1994. I did not sit in, I broke no laws, federal or local, and I was not arrested the day of the event.”
Although local police did not arrest him, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided his home in October 2022 to arrest him under FACE Act charges, nearly a year and a half later.
“My house was assaulted, my wife and children were terrorized, and I was kidnapped at gunpoint by four armed men,” he said. “I had just sent three of my children to the car so I could take them to school when the house began to shake from a loud banging near the front door. I heard men shouting on my porch, ‘Open up, FBI!’”
“I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, staring down the barrels of both a pistol and an automatic weapon pointed at my head,” he added.
Vaughn did not get prison time but was given three years of supervised release. He testified that for him, “all this process is [still] a punishment.”
“There are those who are in jail today while we are discussing this abuse, some of them for over a year at this point,” Vaughn said.
Republicans and Democrats disagree
During the hearing, Roy reiterated his call to repeal the FACE Act and urged President-elect Donald Trump to pardon or commute the sentences of pro-life activists convicted under the law — something that Trump has said he intends to do.
Rep. Dan Bishop, one of the Republican members of the committee, said during the hearing that “it just seems to me troubling.”
“You got guns drawn and pointed at a man’s head and [you have] his children … stopped at the side,” Bishop said, adding that “we’re in an environment where we’re always talking about [how] police officers should deescalate [situations].”
Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman said the “abuse of the FACE Act is an attempt to criminalize the free thought and the ability for people to … peacefully protest.”
“It’s a sad day in America when someone who is praying … [to] be arrested years later for that behavior,” she added.
Republican Rep. Tom McClintock added that the FACE Act is “being administered by people with political biases” and questioned whether there was a way to prevent weaponization without repealing the entirety of the law.
Democrats, however, disagreed that the law has been weaponized and stressed that lawmakers should keep the FACE Act rules in place.
“[Republicans] are really just giving themselves another opportunity to signal their support to the extremists plotting to criminalize or block access to abortion across the country,” Democratic Rep. Mary Scanlon said.
Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler said: “Republicans have found no — zero — credible or direct evidence that supports their specious claims regarding what they alleged is the Department of Justice’s uneven enforcement of the FACE Act.”
“Anti-abortion extremists continue to use violence, threats, and disruption to curb access to abortion,” Nadler said. “So Republicans want to repeal the law that explicitly protects patients, providers, and facilities that provide reproductive health services from these ongoing threats.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland have denied that the FBI or DOJ have been targeting pro-life activists with FACE Act prosecutions.
