The federal government is at war with pro-life activists.
By that I don’t mean that Democrat politicians are doing everything they can to extend the so-called “right” to abortion until birth. That is politics, and for better or worse in the United States political decisions about when life begins and constitutional protections for human beings is afforded to a fetus belong to the states.
State governments are given “police power” under the Constitution, not the federal government.
Police powers are the fundamental ability of a government to enact laws to coerce its citizenry for the public good, although the term eludes an exact definition. The term does not directly relate to the common connotation of police as officers charged with maintaining public order, but rather to broad governmental regulatory power. Berman v. Parker, a 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case, stated that “[p]ublic safety, public health, morality, peace and quiet, law and order. . . are some of the more conspicuous examples of the traditional application of the police power”; while recognizing that “[a]n attempt to define [police power’s] reach or trace its outer limits is fruitless.”
The division of police power in the United States is delineated in the Tenth Amendment, which states that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” That is, in the United States, the federal government does not hold a general police power but may only act where the Constitution enumerates a power. It is the states, then, who hold the general police power. This is a central tenet to the system of federalism, which the U.S. Constitution embodies.
A state’s regulatory power, therefore, is incredibly broad and is limited predominantly by the state constitution, powers which the federal government holds exclusively, the Takings Clause and the incorporation of fundamental federal rights through the Fourteenth Amendment.
I know that’s a long prelude to my post, but it is important background–and frankly, everybody should know this stuff before they spout off about what laws should be passed and by whom. In general, except under specific circumstances, matters of “[p]ublic safety, public health, morality, peace and quiet, law and order” belong to the states.
The current war on pro-lifers should be understood in this context. The federal government is currently exercising powers that legitimately should belong to states, and doing so for the explicit political purpose of intimidating and punishing people for exercising their rights to freely assemble and peacefully protest in favor of saving lives.
Some specifics from Life News:
The Biden administration has been under heavy criticism as Joe Biden’s Justice Department targets peaceful pro-life Americans for protesting abortions in such as a way that they blocked access to an abortion center.
The Justice Department has charged 11 more pro-life activists with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act for blocking the entrance of an abortion clinic in 2021. The 11 activists were charged with FACE Act violations stemming from their 2021 “blockade” of an abortion clinic in Mount Juliet, Tennessee.
New information about one of the pro-life advocates arrested recently shows she is an 87-year-old woman who is a concentration camp survivor.
A federal indictment alleges that the pro-life defendants “engaged in a conspiracy to prevent the clinic from providing” and patients from receiving abortion services and violated the FACE Act by “using physical obstruction to intimidate and interfere with the clinic’s employees and a patient.”
In theory, the fact that one of the arrestees is an 87 year-old concentration camp survivor means little in terms of whether the person should be charged with a crime. It adds color and context to the story, but if she were a murderer we wouldn’t excuse her crime because she has suffered terribly herself.
On the other hand, the fact that she is who she is in this case is very relevant indeed, as is the case for all the defendants in this case, because of what they did and how the federal government is coming down on them like a ton of bricks. Each of the defendants is a devoutly religious peaceful protester whose crime was doing precisely the same sort of protest as was done by civil rights protesters in the 1960s, and who are now heroes to Americans. Their sole goal was the preservation of innocent life, and their sole means was the exercise of free speech and the right to assemble peaceably.
They did, however trespass, and the state arrested a few of them and subsequently released them because the charges were so minor. In almost any other case, this would be the end of it.
Compare that to the riots of 2020–which were celebrated by the Left and despite horrendous crimes being committed, very few people have been prosecuted. Vast swathes of Americans cities were occupied, burned down, violence committed. You know the drill. And the response of the federal establishment? Our public health officials who had been locking down the rest of us declared that the protests actually served the public health. I kid you not.
See the contrast? Certain protests, as long as they are “mostly peaceful,” are great. But if you protest against abortion, the FBI will come after you with guns drawn.
The FACE act, under which these people are being charged, is summarized thusly by congress.gov:
Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 – Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit: (1) intentionally injuring, intimidating, or interfering with, or attempting to injure, intimidate, or interfere, any person by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services; (2) intentionally injuring, intimidating, or interfering with, or attempting to injure, intimidate, or interfere, any person by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship; or (3) intentionally damaging or destroying the property of a facility, or attempting to do so, because such facility provides reproductive health services, or intentionally damaging or destroying the property of a place of religious worship.
Ironically, FACE is supposed to protect Crisis Pregnancy Centers as well, but the federal government has been silent about seeking or prosecuting people who have been vandalizing those centers, arguably at the direction of Members of Congress such as Senator Elizabeth Warren.
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So who are these conspirators who have intimidated women seeking abortions, to the extent that the FBI sends agents armed with automatic weapons to arrest them?
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Several of the activists were arrested on the day of the blockade, after reportedly successfully preventing abortions from taking place at the clinic for most of the day, but police reportedly released these activists later in the day after they posted bail for misdemeanor charges, the pro-life news outlet Live Action reported.
In a Wednesday press release, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee announced that Chester Gallagher, 73, of Lebanon, Tennessee; Heather Idoni, 58, of Michigan; Calvin Zastrow, 57, of Michigan; Caroline Davis, 24, of Michigan; Coleman Boyd, 51, of Bolton, Mississippi; Dennis Green, 56, of Cumberland, Virginia; and Paul Vaughn, 55, of Centerville, Tennessee, are charged with “conspiracy against rights secured by the FACE Act, and committing FACE Act violations.”
Hurley, a pro-life activist who is friends with many of those charged on Wednesday, told The Daily Signal that the FBI raided Gallagher’s home on Wednesday morning with “guns drawn.” Hurley was not physically present but said he was alerted to the alleged raid by his friends.
The state and local governments dealt with the protests as you might expect: several of the protesters were actually arrested for the crime of trespassing, and were released the same day because the charges were so minor.
This sort of protest happens literally every day in America. It would be easy enough to find teachers encouraging their young students to participate in such events, particularly if they further the DEI cause.
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But these were anti-abortion protesters, so they must be raided by the FBI in late 2022 for a protest that took place in 2021. Protests that were pretty much ignored by the local police.
The FBI raids–of which this case is only one of several on pro-life protesters–only ramped up after Dobbs and are clearly politically motivated. This isn’t law enforcement, it is political intimidation.
If you read what the FBI is actually accusing the defendants of you will be shocked by the ridiculous inconsistency of the resources devoted to the cases and the actual accusations.
The [FBI press] release details the charges in the indictment:
The indictment alleges that, beginning in February 2021, Chester Gallagher utilized social media to promote a series of anti-abortion events scheduled for March 4-7, 2021, in the Nashville area. Other co-conspirators then utilized Facebook to coordinate travel and logistics and to identify other participants for the blockade. On March 4, 2021, Coleman Boyd and Chester Gallager advertised the blockade of the Carafem Health Center Clinic, in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, which was planned for the following day. In his social media post, Gallagher referred to the blockade as a “rescue.”
Boyd also began a Facebook livestream broadcast of the clinic blockade at 7:45 a.m. on March 5, 2021. This livestream broadcast was titled, in part, “Mt. Juliet, TN Rescue March 5, 2021,” and livestreamed the blockade event as his coconspirators and others blocked the clinic’s entry doors and prevented a patient and an employee from entering. The livestream also broadcast members of the group attempting to engage a patient and her companion as Boyd told his livestream audience that the patient was a “mom coming to kill her baby.”
Agents raid a home with guns drawn on a man in late middle age, and the charge is that he conspired to peacefully protest, live streamed the protest, and he even talked to woman who was thinking of getting an abortion. For this they are threatening him with a jail term of a decade?
This case is hardly unique:
These FBI arrests are the most recent in a line of targeted attacks against pro-life individuals who peacefully participate in activities at or outside abortion facilities in the United States. One of the most notable was the recent FBI raid on the home of Philadelphia sidewalk counselor Mark Houck, whose home was visited in late September by approximately 15-20 agents in tactical gear, with guns drawn, in the presence of Houck’s wife and seven young children.
Hurley told Live Action News that just weeks ago, he and some other individuals visited the building that houses the Mt. Juliet Carafem abortion facility, remaining outside, and asked to speak to the officers inside. They allegedly came out and spoke with Hurley, and just three days later, Hurley and others present were served with civil FACE Act charges though they never entered the facility.
This is all part of a pattern where the Justice Department is using the FBI as political police, targeting people who present a threat to the narrative™ of the regime. It is unlikely that any of these people will serve much jail time (let us hope!), but that ignore a deeper reality:
The process itself is the punishment. Having your house raided. Getting arrested. Having to hire a lawyer. Fighting the charges for perhaps years. The warning is clear: if you cross the Left, they will make your life hell–and use the power of the state to do it.
This is, by the way, exactly the sort of thing that the Steele Dossier was concocted to do to Donald Trump: cripple his presidency and dog him for years based upon trumped up charges and accusations. Years later the matter was dropped, but the damage done to his presidency, to Americans’ trust in government and each other, and to the credibility of our law enforcement is incalculable.
That was the point–the Steel Dossier and Crossfire Hurricane resulted in no charges and were revealed to be entirely bogus, but the process worked to achieve its goal nonetheless.
Is there anything we can do about the politicization of the Justice Department and the FBI? Yes, and perhaps no.
Yes, we can punish the Left by crushing them at the polls. Then impeach AG Garland.
But so much damage has been done and the temptation for revenge will be strong enough that the FBI and Justice Department may be permanently broken.
If so, it is one more brick in the foundation of our Republic that has been knocked out.
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