The Justice Department is seeking prison time for two pro-life Christians convicted of violating federal law for their roles in a peaceful protest at a Tennessee abortion facility.
Pro-life activists Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, and Eva Edl are all set to be sentenced this week for their participation in a sit-in protest at a Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, abortion facility in March 2021. The Justice Department has asked for federal judges to impose a prison sentence on both Gallagher and Idoni, while asking for Edl to be given probation.
Gallagher and Idoni were convicted in January in Nashville of engaging in a conspiracy against rights and violating the FACE Act, a Clinton-era law that makes it a federal crime to physically block access to an abortion facility. Edl, an 89-year-old communist concentration camp survivor, was convicted of violating the FACE Act in April.
In pre-sentencing filings, the Biden DOJ has asked Judge Aleta Trauger to sentence Gallagher, 75, to 20 months in prison and three years of probation, and to sentence Idoni to eight months in prison and three years of supervised release. The Justice Department will allow Idoni to concurrently serve sentences for conspiracy and FACE Act charges, but only after she completes her two-year sentence for a similar conviction out of Washington, D.C.
Trauger and Idoni are set to be sentenced on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
The Justice Department has asked for 3 years of probation for Edl, who will be sentenced Thursday morning by Judge Chip Frensley. Edl was convicted in August of a conspiracy charge for a pro-life protest in Detroit and, could face prison upon sentencing.
The conspiracy charge, a Reconstruction-era law designed to counter the Ku Klux Klan, carries stiff penalties of over 10 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. Pro-life activists around the country have already received over five years in prison for the charge, which was first applied to pro-lifers by the Biden-Harris administration.
During the protest over which they were charged, the pro-lifers sang hymns, prayed, urged women not to get abortions, and sat in front of doors in a hallway outside the Carafem Health Center Clinic.
The Biden-Harris administration’s prosecutions of peaceful activists are being challenged by the Thomas More Society, which is working to appeal the Nashville and D.C. FACE Act and conspiracy convictions, and convince a federal judge to dismiss the Detroit convictions.
In a video briefing Thursday night attended by The Daily Wire, Thomas More Society attorney Steve Crampton was optimistic about stopping the targeted prosecution of pro-lifers under the FACE Act.
“We’re going after FACE, we hope to knock it completely out of the water on these appeals. And we’re also going after this conspiracy against rights statute and we think we’re going get that thing knocked out of the park as well,” Crampton said.
He said that data shows 97% of all prosecutions have been against pro-lifers, even though the law was supposed to protect churches and pregnancy centers when it was passed in the 1990s.
“Instead the Biden-Harris administration has brought a grand total of 25% percent of all the FACE cases ever brought since its inception in 1994 in the last two years and targeted pro-lifers,” he said.
Crampton said that he believed they would win on appeal, but that he was ready to go to the Supreme Court, which has never heard a FACE Act case before, if necessary.
Because of the selective prosecution and overturning of Roe v. Wade, Crampton argued that the law is unconstitutional.
“FACE always was about protecting one thing and that was abortion,” Crampton said. “Since the Dobbs decision and the overturn of Roe, abortion is no longer recognized as a federally protected right. So FACE is an act without really a purpose.”
He also argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in Fischer, which limited the Justice Department’s ability to prosecute January 6 protesters, could be applied in the pro-life cases. In both cases, the Justice Department resurrected an old law to pursue harsh penalties against protesters in a different context than that with which the law originally dealt.
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