The “DC Nine” rescuers – who have been detained in federal custody since their unjust conviction in August and November of last year – will be sentenced by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly next week, on Tuesday, May 14, Wednesday, May 15, and Friday, May 17. A Life Legal attorney represents one of the nine defendants and earnestly requests that our supporters pray for all of them.
And pray hard. During trial, the court showed no inclination to treat pro-lifers gently or even in accord with basic principles of fairness. They were denied their most formidable defense – video evidence revealing the sick and illegal excesses of abortionist Cesare Santangelo, whose infant slaughterhouse the government was eager to exalt. Irrelevant, according to the court.
When the defense attorneys moved to dismiss the FACE charges because a federal “right to abortion” undergirding the federal statute no longer existed, the court instructed both sides to prepare briefs on whether the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, establishes a right to abortion. We were able to quickly disabuse the court of this absurd notion, but the charges were maintained all the same.
More fundamentally, our client did not in fact violate the FACE Act under which the entire group was prosecuted. Our client did not obstruct patients at all. But that made no difference. “Guilty!” cried the jury – and off for a nine-month stay in jail BEFORE sentencing went the peaceful protesters.
The prosecution of the DC Nine is just one example of our current DOJ’s malicious abuse of the FACE statute in a fit of pro-abortion rage. Similar prosecutions are underway in Michigan and in Tennessee.
Readers may be wondering about the wisdom of rescuers’ action in these cases. If FACE prosecutions and the novel application of a 19th-century “conspiracy against rights” law constitute such a devastating danger, wouldn’t it be smarter for pro-life activists to find different avenues of activism?
The answer is that all these prosecutions were initiated long after the rescues in question, long after local legal proceedings were concluded. The defendants had already been charged with trespass – and the charges were dismissed. But that wasn’t enough for the abortion zealots. They reached back to 1870 to reinterpret a statute that was enacted to protect the voting rights of previously disenfranchised Black Americans during the Reconstruction Era. It is the bitterest of ironies that the statute is now being used to prevent the rescue of another group of people deemed non-persons – unborn children.
Readers may also be wondering whether, given this unbridled official hostility, any sort of pro-life activism is now advisable. We at Life Legal can assure pro-lifers that the First Amendment is still in effect, and that pro-life protest, prayer, and sidewalk counseling are still protected on public sidewalks and other areas open to free speech.
We have guidance for sidewalk activities outside abortion clinics available here. If you have any questions about what is permissible or not, please contact us.
Those awaiting sentencing in DC next week face a maximum 11 years in federal prison. In contrast, the average time served in DC for the violent crime of assault – assuming the crime is even prosecuted – is only 13 months.
Please pray for the DC Nine. And pray for other rescuers facing the unrelenting enmity of the Biden administration. They need all pro-lifers to stand in solidarity with them just as they have stood in solidarity with babies targeted by abortionist ghouls such as Cesare Santangelo.