Pro-Life Activists Face Prison Time as DOJ Increases FACE Act Prosecutions
Standing ministers in the United States hold bullhorns and other graphic signs that depict aborted children. They reach pregnant women within seconds of walking into their homes. abortion facilities.
“We had one mother who came up to me on the sidewalk. She saw some signs of ours, stopped, and said, ‘Is that real?’ It was a photo of a baby that had been aborted,” The Epoch Times interviewed Denny Green (56), from Cumberland in Virginia. “We let her know, ‘Yeah, that is real.’ She said, ‘If that’s real, I can’t do that to my baby,’ and she decided not to take her baby’s life.”
Green explained that the group followed up on the woman and provided food assistance, but eventually lost touch with her five years later.
“She saw us out on the street again, stopped and let us meet her little girl,” He stated. “That has happened numerous times. We’re there for the long haul, if they need us, as a friend or as a help. We’re there to walk with them.”
Green is among 11 people federally charged with the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for a March 2021 pro-life Demonstrations at an now-closed Mount Juliet, Tennessee abortion facility The FACE Act prohibits interference with obtaining or providing abortions.
The abortion facility was located in a larger medical building with other unrelated medical offices. While some of the accused stood in the hallway blocking the entrance, others stood further down the hall closer to an elevator. One of the group members captured a video showing them singing Christian songs and praying to the women who sought entry to the facility.
“Sir, that baby is a blessing from God,” One of the 11 described a couple who went towards the abortion facility, looked down at the people, and then got back up on the elevator.
“Yeah. More power to you,” As the elevator doors were closed, the man and the woman spoke.
Local police took some of the members and charged them with trespassing. The trespassing charge was dropped and the group was released. The FBI charged them 19 months later in October 2022.
By this time, the abortion facility was closed due to a change in Tennessee law that now bans abortion after a baby’s heartbeat is detected.
The landscape on the frontline of abortion is changing.
Sidewalk counselors often preach from the sidewalk. Abortion facilities employ volunteer escorts to help women get from their cars to the doors. The escorts sometimes try to drown out the voices of preachers and counselors by blowing whistles, running loud leaf blowers, or screaming vulgarities at them.
Just after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court, President Joe Biden issued an executive directive for his administration. “the heightened risk related to seeking and providing reproductive health care.” He created the Reproductive rights Task Force, an organization led by the Justice Department that focuses in part on enforcement of the FACE Act.
The 1994 FACE Act was passed. It has been used to curb some pro-life activities at abortion facilities. Since the 1980s, thousands upon thousands of prolife activists who were willing to face low-level charges for trespassing began to sit-ins at abortion facilities across the country, pray, or carry signs. But after the fatal shootings of two abortionists and three facility workers in the early 1990s, the FACE Act—which calls for federal prison and fines—was implemented. People were reluctant to take on federal charges, and they quit the movement.
However, pro-life activists still have the courage to sacrifice their lives in order to save infants who are headed for death.
The Biden administration is now cracking down on them. According to the DOJ website, 17 people were criminally charged with violating the FACE Act in the 10 years that ran from 2011 to 2021. 26 people were charged by the DOJ in 2022. The Epoch Times contacted the DOJ for comment.
Stiffer Penalties
Paul Vaughn, a father to 11 children from Centerville, Tennessee was getting ready to take them to school on October 5, 2022. The FBI knocked at his door, with their guns drawn. FBI agents took him into custody, drove him to Nashville and placed him in a locked cell.
At 2 p.m., he stated that they had released him into the streets of Nashville without his phone or wallet. He was also given a new list with pretrial restrictions such as travel restrictions.
The penalties are also higher, despite the fact that there have been more FACE Act arrests in recent years. Vaughn could spend 11 years in federal prison for conspiracy.
“I’ve got an 18-month-old at home and several other children that will spend a good part of their developing years without dad at home, if I end up going to prison for an extended time,” Vaughn stated this to The Epoch Times.
He stated that he and his wife had cried many times and prayed over the situation.
“God is in control,” He stated. “He knows the beginning from the end. My children will see their dad at least had the courage to stand for what’s right.”
There are two federal conspiracy statutes for these kinds of cases, Stephen Crampton, Vaughn’s attorney and senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, told The Epoch Times. One stipulates that for conspiracy violations, the penalty must not exceed that for the underlying crime.
“In this case, a first offense, nonviolent FACE violation, you only have a misdemeanor charge, up to one year in prison. So if they were to use that particular generic conspiracy statute, all they could get for the conspiracy part is another one year,” Crampton stated that this was the first time he remembers being charged with conspiracy in relation to a FACE case.
“They dug deep in their little bag of tricks and found the conspiracy to Violate Civil Rights statute and charged us with that one, which carries a sentence up to 10 years,” Crampton stated. “What was the civil right we were talking about with FACE? It was abortion. So now they’re going to pretend that the civil rights they’re dealing with, is the right to access to so-called reproductive health care. … Civil rights was always abortion, not the right to go in and get a pregnancy test. Nobody in the pro-life movement is going to engage in concerted activities to prohibit that action. So there’s all these little white lies that they’re using to try to throw the book at Paul and other folks since Roe v. Wade has been overturned.”
One of the conspiracy charges that the defendants in this case are facing stems from the fact that they used Facebook to communicate about meeting the group and live-streaming it as they were standing in the corridor.
Death and Life
Eva Edl, 87-year-old Communist concentration camp survivor, is currently facing one year in federal prison. The trial will not take place until January 2024. She can be sentenced to prison at 88 and 89, depending on whether she is eligible.
“You know, I’m just going to continue, no matter what. I’m going to continue saving lives,” When they knocked at her door, Edl revealed this to the FBI. She then asked the agents questions. “Do you know Jesus?”
Edl has been charged with blocking abortion clinics more 50 times in the last 35-years. Edl was traumatized by her childhood, having to leave Yugoslavia and be taken to one of the communist concentration camp that existed after World War II.
“When I was on the cattle car with all my people, and we were shipped to the death camp to be exterminated, the people around us were not in agreement with what the government did. But they were intimidated,” Edl shared his thoughts with The Epoch Times. “But as Christians, if we really believe in Jesus Christ, that is no excuse. We have to overcome that fear and do what is right anyhow. Then he helps us through it. I just wish, in those days, that somebody would have cared enough to go to in front of that gate and stand on those railroad tracks and say, ‘You cannot take these babies and children unless you go over our dead bodies.’”
She stated that the train would have likely crushed a few people if they were only a handful. She stated that thousands of people would have protested, and the government would have made an example out of some. They would have to stop or the people would have protested against the brutality.
“Same here. If we are just a few, we might be crushed. But if more and more would just lay down their lives and be willing to at least go to jail to protect these babies, we would have more success. But then, who knows what the Lord will do. He may honor even the sacrifice of the few. I’m always hopeful.”
‘Speak the Truth’
Just because the government says abortion is legal doesn’t mean it is right, Edl.
“It is not right. If it is right for the American government to legalize the killing of innocent human beings inside the womb, then why do we condemn the Nazis who also legalized the extermination of born people—Jews, Gypsies and other unwanted individuals? Why do we condemn the communist government of Yugoslavia who exterminated my people? If it is a good thing to kill human beings just as long as the government says so, then we have no right to condemn anybody else. But we all know deep down that these things are evil,” Edl said.
“Nobody’s life is ultimately safe in a nation ruled by someone who does not respect all human life, from conception to natural death. It will just depend who is in power and whose whim will dictate who is permitted to live and who is going to be exterminated.”
She is amazed at the power of the Unites Stated. “woke” Ideology and manipulation of speech. She says it looks like communism, a one-world order that is trying to destroy the nation. People must not ignore it.
“Speak the truth. And pay the price,” Edl. “Otherwise you’re going to pay a price even worse.”
Intimidation
“Tennessee and Arkansas, they have quit murdering babies. All their surgical facilities are closed, and the feds are most unhappy about that,” Calvin Zastrow from Michigan was a sidewalk preacher who was arrested in connection to the Tennessee incident. “So, what can they do to discourage individuals, groups, churches, state legislatures and whole state cultures? What can they do to discourage that activity of saving babies? Okay, well, let’s find some folks and really lash out at them.”
Vaughn stated that the psychological impact of the pro-life community being penalized more severely has an adverse effect on culture. It encourages fear and makes people less likely to speak.
“Someone that might have potentially gone out to the abortion clinic and felt like they wanted to go help somebody in need, now is going to think twice about it,” Vaughn claimed. “Someone that may want to speak up about any other type of thing, maybe election fraud, or any number of things—a politician misusing their power, a police chief misusing their power—we might normally go to the next county commission meeting and call them out. But now, knowing the environment we live in, everything is being weaponized against free speech. They may have second thoughts about doing that. And that adds another step to losing the freedoms that we cherish so much here in America.”
Although they would prefer not to be locked up in prison, the Tennessee prisoners are at peace with the possibility.
“It’s all on the altar for me,” Zastrow is a father to four children. “I’m prepared for them to charge me with 11 years in prison and take all my property away. I made the mental and spiritual decision. … It’s all an act of worship to Christ.”
Prison life
Heather Idoni, 58, says that it’s possible she will die in prison.
“So far, I’m the only one with two sets of charges, 11 years for each. So, I could be looking at the rest of my natural life in prison, which I’m willing to accept, if that’s what God wants,” Idoni shared his story with The Epoch Times. “I must have a heck of a ministry coming, to talk to the women there. I know babies’ lives have been saved that way, in the jails. We have a captive audience. A lot of Christian ministries have not even been able to get into the jails again since COVID.”
Livingstone, Michigan resident Idoni was present at the Tennessee event. In October 2020, she was arrested for being present at an additional abortion facility in Washington D.C. Between these two sets, she could face 22-years imprisonment. She is a bookkeeper and mother to 16 children, including 10 adopted Ukrainian boys.
“My defense of the unborn has come from simply wanting to obey God and understanding Proverbs 24:10–12,” Idoni said.
This Bible verse states: “If you falter in a time of trouble, how small is your strength! Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?”
Coleman Boyd (51), a Bolton, Mississippi emergency room physician and father to 12, was struck with the same verse.
“What hit me was, I know where that’s happening. There was an abortion mill in Jackson, Mississippi,” Boyd spoke to The Epoch Times. “I never thought about it. I mean, I was, ‘pro-life,’ I was against abortion because I knew it was wrong. But it never hit me that people were being murdered. And what should good Christians do if people are being murdered? They should act. Well, as I continued to read, Proverbs 31 says, ‘Open your mouth for the speechless in the cause of all who reported destruction. Open your mouth, defend the innocent.’”
Through that, Boyd’s family started sidewalk preaching in 2007. Boyd could also be sentenced to 11 years for FACE violations in Tennessee.
“Abortion is the central sin of our nation—the shedding of innocent blood—and that’s going to bring destruction on our own our nation and future generations, as much or more than anything going on with our country,” Boyd said.
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