Critics accuse DOJ of targeting pro‑lifers
Critics say the Biden Justice Department is increasingly using existing laws to pursue harsher sentences against some pro‑life activists. (x.com) That allegation has become part of the domestic political backlash coinciding with other White House policy moves. (x.com)
The Justice Department under President Donald Trump has turned a Republican complaint into an official finding, releasing an April 14 report that says the Biden administration enforced the federal clinic-access law more aggressively against anti-abortion activists than against abortion-rights offenders. (justice.gov, cbsnews.com) The report centers on the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, a 1994 law that makes it a federal crime to use force, threats, or physical obstruction to interfere with people seeking or providing reproductive health services, and also covers attacks on places of worship. (uscode.house.gov, justice.gov) Trump’s Justice Department said its review covered more than 700,000 internal records and found Biden-era prosecutors sought an average sentence of 26.8 months for pro-life defendants, compared with 12.3 months for pro-abortion defendants charged under the same law. (justice.gov) One case that fueled the backlash was Mark Houck’s. Federal agents arrested the Pennsylvania anti-abortion activist in September 2022, and a Philadelphia jury acquitted him on January 30, 2023, of a FACE Act charge tied to an altercation with a clinic escort. (phillyburbs.com, ewtnnews.com) Another flashpoint was the Washington Surgi-Clinic blockade case. Lauren Handy was sentenced to 57 months in prison on May 14, 2024, after prosecutors said she helped organize a 2020 clinic invasion that used chains, locks, furniture, and people’s bodies to block patients and police. (justice.gov, wusa9.com) The Biden administration also kept bringing new FACE cases in 2024. On May 20, 2024, the department sued two anti-abortion groups and seven people in Ohio, alleging they physically obstructed access to reproductive health services. (justice.gov) Abortion-rights groups and legal advocates have said these prosecutions enforced a law written to protect patients and providers from blockades and violence, not speech. After Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists on January 23, 2025, the Center for Reproductive Rights said many of those cases involved people convicted of blocking clinic entrances and harassing patients. (reproductiverights.org, independent.co.uk) The policy changed four days later. A January 24, 2025, Justice Department memo said prosecutors should bring new FACE Act criminal cases only in “extraordinary circumstances,” including death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage. (justice.gov, ewtn.co.uk) That left two competing accounts in place at once: Biden officials had argued they were enforcing a neutral federal law, while Trump officials now say the same law was used unevenly and too harshly. Tuesday’s report formalizes that dispute inside the Justice Department itself. (cbsnews.com, justice.gov)
