The Biden administration has been busy prosecuting pro-lifers since the overturn of Roe v. Wade two years ago, but dozens of attacks on pregnancy centers and churches remain unprosecuted.
In the two years since the leak of the Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, pro-life churches and pregnancy centers have been vandalized, broken into, threatened and even firebombed by pro-abortion activists. While only prosecuting a handful of individuals involved in these attacks, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has occupied its time by imprisoning pro-lifers who protest at abortion clinics.
As of March, 90 pregnancy centers and resource groups have suffered vandalism, graffiti, property damage, arson, firebombing and even assault on staff members, according to the Catholic Vote, which has tracked the incidents since Dobbs. Additionally, 257 Catholic churches have also come under attack by pro-abortion activists such as Jane’s Revenge and Ruth Sent Us, which have been linked to Antifa and other anarchist groups, with over 30 of the attacks from 2024 alone.
Meanwhile, the DOJ has convicted multiple pro-lifers for obstructing access to abortion clinics in violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services.” On June 3, a federal court sentenced 75-year-old Paulette Harlow to two years in prison for peacefully blocking access to an abortion clinic in 2020 and in May, pro-life activist Lauren Handy was ordered to serve 57 months in prison for the same protest, while nearly a dozen others are awaiting sentencing.
The DOJ also used the FACE Act to charge Mark Houck, a father who was accused of assaulting an abortion clinic volunteer during a protest. In October 2022, the FBI raided Houck’s house and arrested him in front of his wife and children; Houck was acquitted by a jury in January.
However, despite the rash of attacks against churches and pregnancy centers two years after the fall of Roe, the department has done little to also prosecute the individuals responsible.
As of May 2023, only one out of 34 criminal and civil charges brought under the FACE Act since 2011 involved an attack on a pro-life pregnancy clinic in Florida, according to the DOJ’s most recent statistics on the subject. The department charged four individuals with intimidation for vandalizing two pregnancy centers by spray painting “If abortions aren’t safe than neither are you,” and “We’re coming for U.”
The department did not respond to the DCNF’s request for a current list of FACE Act prosecutions.
“The FACE Act stands for the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, but many don’t know that it also criminalizes intentional damage, destruction, and obstruction of places of worship,” Tommy Valentine, Director of CatholicVote’s Accountability Project, told the DCNF. “The Biden DOJ has aggressively enforced the law against pro-lifers engaged in peaceful civil disobedience outside abortion clinics, gleefully charging old ladies. But there have been over 400 attacks on Catholic churches over the last four years and there has not been a single federal prosecution. And they have prosecuted fewer than 10 people in the 90 attacks on pregnancy resource centers since the leak of the Dobbs decision two years ago.”
Kristi Hamrick, vice president of Media and Policy for Students for Life of America, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the double standard speaks volumes about the administration’s priorities when it comes to protecting pro-abortion advocates versus pro-lifers.
“To put pro-life people in prison because of their viewpoint, that’s a whole different level,” Hamrick said. “They’re not prosecuting the crime, they’re just prosecuting the point of view.”
The discrepancy also caught the attention of Congress in May 2023, when Republican Sen. Ted Cruz asked Attorney General Merrick Garland why the DOJ had failed to bring charges against those who attacked churches and pregnancy centers with the same speed as the department had with abortion clinics, according to the New York Post. Garland responded that the persons responsible committed the crimes “at night” and were “doing it in secret,” but that he was convinced the FBI was looking into it “with urgency.”
Without any repercussions from the DOJ, attacks against pregnancy centers and churches are likely to continue, according to Valentine.
“The goal seems to be selective and politicized enforcement of federal law to punish those who oppose the Biden administration’s policy positions and turn a blind eye to criminals who support them,” Valentine said. “Our second Catholic president appears to be perfectly okay with violence against Catholic churches because the attackers are of the left. It sounds dark, but absent another explanation, it seems to be true, especially because there is a pattern of selective enforcement of many laws under this DOJ.”
