As Biden FBI and DOJ Abuse the Law To Raid and Prosecute Pro-Life Advocates, ACLJ Stands Ready To Defend Pro-Lifers

President Biden’s FBI and DOJ have gone on a rampage of late, raiding, arresting, and charging peaceful pro-life advocates. This is just the beginning in a coordinated campaign to prosecute and persecute pro-lifers into silence. If Biden can take out the competition (and that’s what the radical Left sees in those who want to save babies), then the abortionists win. The ACLJ stands ready, willing, and able to defend pro-life advocates and beat back this blatant abuse of power.

Here's what’s happening. Congress passed, and President Clinton signed into law on May 26, 1994, the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. 18 U.S.C. § 248. The law was a federal response to the pro-life rescue movement, in which, at the urging of Operation Rescue and others, pro-life individuals engaged in nonviolent sit-ins at abortion businesses. Participants understood that they, like the civil rights activists of the past, would face possible arrest and prosecution for their civil disobedience. Here at the ACLJ, we had been defending numerous rescuers against a miscellany of low-level state charges that they encountered after being arrested by local police. And when pro-life advocates were charged under the Ku Klux Klan Act and sued under RICO statutes, we defeated these misapplications of the law at the Supreme Court. Then, when FACE became law and made sit-ins at abortion businesses a federal offense, we launched multiple constitutional challenges to FACE. Other pro-life attorneys did the same. Unfortunately, none of those ultimately succeeded back then (when, of course, Roe was still the reigning precedent),  though none of them ever reached the Supreme Court except in unsuccessful petitions for certiorari.

Pro-life rescues largely came to an end. And so did FACE charges.

But now, with the ferociously pro-abortion Biden Administration running the Executive Branch, FACE is back with a vengeance. Not only is the Biden DOJ using FACE against those participating in a classic “rescue” at an abortion business (here and here), the Administration is sending FBI agents out to arrest pro-life individuals for squabbles outside abortion businesses that were so minor they did not even warrant local charges (here). This looks very much like an attempt to crush pro-life activism generally – or to deliver trophies to appease the pro-abortion forces that control the Biden Administration.

At the same time, the Biden FBI and DOJ have thus far refused to even investigate numerous firebombings and vandalism of pro-life pregnancy resource centers.

It is still an open question in the U.S. Supreme Court whether FACE is a constitutional exercise of congressional power. As the Court in Dobbs made clear, there is no constitutional right to abortion that could support such a law. The law targets one side of a political and moral controversy. And the Constitution does not confer general police power on the federal government. We previously challenged FACE on multiple constitutional grounds. We are prepared to do so again. One of the primary missions of the ACLJ is to defend those who defend tiny innocent humans before birth. If you are being harassed or prosecuted for your pro-life work – under FACE or any other law – please contact us at ACLJ.org/HELP. We are equipped and ready to take on the Biden FBI and DOJ’s abuses.