While Americans stage sit ins across the country to protest Israel or the use of oil, only pro-life Americans have a federal law targeting them for engaging in similar protests at abortion centers. Although the law has rarely been used to prosecute pro-life advocates, Joe Biden’s radical abortion agenda includes ramping up prosecutions and he’s already gotten several pro-life people convicted under the federal FACE law.
Now, a 73-year-old woman with medical issues faces over a decade in prison for participating in a rescue at an abortion center in Washington D.C. that kills babies in late-term abortions.
Paulette Harlow (pictured right) was convicted yesterday after a bench trial of violating the law during the protest, which has seen multiple pro-life advocates be convicted. There is a possibility Harlow may serve her prison term under house arrest because she has a significant medical condition.
“Harlow suffers from significant health issues and was not immediately detained following her guilty verdict in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia,” according to a CNA report.
Because of Harlow’s health issues, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who presided over the bench trial, allowed her to remain under house arrest until her sentencing hearing on March 19, 2024, Allen Orenberg, her defense attorney, told CNA on Thursday.
The penalties for her conviction could land her with a sentence of a maximum of 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000.
Although the nine other pro-life activists are currently either serving time or awaiting their sentences, Orenberg said, “I’m optimistic that the judge will fashion a sentence of home detention.”
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“Mrs. Harlow has some significant medical issues that need to be addressed on a regular basis. And the judge said on the record that this will allow her to see her doctors rather than having to deal with the Bureau of Prisons at this stage where the level or the quality of medical care may not be the same,” he said.
When other pro-life advocates were arrested, tried and convicted under the law after Biden’s DOJ pursued prison time for the pro-life protest, Harlow condemned the trials as political persecution and said she was “not surprised” by the verdicts.
Harlow criticized the Biden administration for selectively enforcing the FACE law, which is designed to protect not only abortion centers but pro-life pregnancy centers. She said Biden is targeting pro-life Americans while virtually ignoring almost 100 attacks on pregnancy centers.
“Because the trial was very, very biased,” she said. “And to try to label them [defendants] as violent, or any of the pro-life people as violent is very, very false, and it’s just meant to sway people away from what we’re trying to do. And what we’re trying to do is save lives.”
The FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act prohibits individuals from attempting to injure, intimidate, or interfere (by use of force, threat of force, or physical obstruction) with anyone obtaining or performing an abortion. The pro-life advocates who have been convicted say they were not engaging in any violence or attempting to injure or intimidate anyone, but merely engaging in their First Amendment rights to protest.
The pro-lifers on trial conducted a rescue at the Washington Surgi-Clinic operated by the notorious late-term abortionist Cesare Santangelo who was busted by a LiveAction undercover investigator for admitting that he would not help a child with life-saving efforts if he or she survived a late-term abortion. He emphatically stated that a nearby hospital’s efforts to save the life of a child he was trying to abort was “the stupidest thing they could have done.”
Lauren Handy and Herb Geraghty cited those videos as the reason for the rescue and protest at the abortion business because of the concern babies might be left to die. They chained themselves to the entrace of the abortion center in an attempt to stop abortions.
Last March, some of the rescuers currently on trial were given 115 aborted babies by the driver of a medical waste van outside Santangelo’s late-term abortion facility. The babies were well-developed – second and possibly third trimester. Their remains are still in a vault at the D.C. medical examiner’s office.
In October 2020, about two months after the remains were obtained, the nine pro-lifers blocked the entrance of the abortion facility and protesting abortion.
Responding the the verdicts, Thomas More Society, the pro-life legal group that defended Handy, called out the judge and Biden administration for their efforts “to chill pro-life speech and activism.”
“A a federal court jury fraught with bias has delivered the Biden Department of Justice the conviction of several life advocates. The group of peaceful pro-life citizens were charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act along with a conspiracy against ‘rights’ that the United States Supreme Court has not found in the Constitution. The defendants were arrested in March 2022, a year and a half after their alleged actions outside of a Washington, DC abortion facility,” the legal group said.
“Handy and her Thomas More Society defense team will appeal this decision, handed down today in United States District Court for the District of Columbia,” it said.
Martin Cannon, TMS senior attorney, told LifeNews: “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. 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.”
Pro-Life advocates Joan Andrews Bell, Jonathan Darnell, Paulette Harlow and Jean Marshall were convicted as well.
Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, a liberal pro-life group that some of the 9 pro-life people are affiliated with, condemned the ruling. The group promised an appeal.
“The defense attorneys feel they have strong grounds to appeal and feel optimistic that a higher court will later rule in their favor. This may even go all the way to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, our hero rescuers await sentencing,” it said.
Defense attorneys reportedly planned to use photos and video footage of the remains of the aborted children to help make their case. However, Judge Kollar-Kotelly held a pre-trial conference on August 8 wherein she warned attorneys that she would not allow claims that the defendants were acting in defense of other persons. The attorneys were informed that they were not allowed to use certain words like “infanticide, “abortion,” or “innocent lives.”
Additionally, the jury is comprised of 12 individuals, and, reportedly, at least four are strong supporters of legalized abortion.
