(LifeSiteNews) — Three pro-life advocates have been sentenced for Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act violations on Tuesday over their involvement in a 2021 peaceful protest and blockade of a Tennessee abortion center.
James Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, and Paul Place were sentenced to 90 days in home detention and three years of probation for their efforts to save the lives of unborn children from abortion by assembling in front of the entrance to Carafem Health Center Clinic in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. The trio were convicted in April of misdemeanor violations, along with Eva Edl, 87, a concentration camp survivor.
During the protest, documented in a video posted to Facebook, Edl sat in a wheelchair in front of the door to the abortion facility. Place and Eva Zastrow sat next to Edl, while the remainder of the group gathered along the sides of the hallway outside the facility. The pro-lifers sang hymns, prayed, and refused to leave when asked by police officers.
On one occasion, the protesters attempted to engage an apparently abortion-seeking woman in conversation about the preciousness of her preborn baby.
BREAKING: Six pro-life activists were just found guilty in federal court after being prosecuted by Biden’s DOJ under the FACE Act for protesting outside a Nashville abortion clinic.
Here’s a snippet of the protest, which occurred on March 5, 2021.
For the crime of praying and… pic.twitter.com/UPzZvtZebM
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 30, 2024
One officer who asked the pro-lifers to leave appeared sympathetic to their cause. The organizer of the protest, Chester Gallagher, tried to explain to the officer why their moral obligation to protect innocent life came before their obligation to the law.
“Inside of that door are murderers, paid baby-killers,” he told the officer. “As you’ve already experienced coming down this hallway, [there] was a mother carrying an innocent child who is [t]o be ripped from her mother’s womb inside that place.”
Six others who were involved in the blockade were convicted of more serious felony “conspiracy” charges for helping to organize the rescue effort earlier this year, and four were sentenced last month: Paul Vaughn and Dennis Green, who were given three years of supervised release; Coleman Boyd, who was given five years of probation, a $10,000 fine, and travel restrictions; and Calvin Zastrow, who was considered one of the main organizers, was given a 6-month prison sentence followed by three years of supervised release.
Eleven people in total were convicted for their involvement in the rescue effort. Judges have postponed the sentencing for Edl, Heather Idoni, and Chester Gallagher, who are preparing for an August trial in Michigan for similar charges.
READ: Biden DOJ files $50,000 FACE Act lawsuit against another group of pro-lifers
Former rescuer Caroline Davis was also charged in the Tennessee rescue and pleaded guilty in October 2023. Per The Tennessean, she is now “cooperating with the government” and agreed to “testify against her co-defendants at trial.” She previously testified against defendants in a separate trial over a Washington, D.C., rescue as well, which saw all participants charged with FACE Act violations and immediately incarcerated.
Republicans concerned about the Biden administration’s focus on pro-life advocates to the overwhelming exclusion of pro-abortion and anti-Christian activists led the GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives to create a “Weaponization of Government” Select Committee in January 2023 to investigate reported instances of FBI and other federal intelligence agencies’ meddling in domestic politics, including the use of the FACE Act to arrest pro-lifers like Mark Houck and Vaughn.
Many Republican lawmakers and others have slammed the Biden administration for having “selectively enforced” the FACE Act to go after pro-lifers while failing to prosecute virtually any of the more than 100 attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and churches since the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked.
The Biden administration’s dramatic bias in its prosecution of pro-lifers is evident from the fact that since May 2020, there have been at least 429 attacks on U.S. Catholic churches, with many including pro-abortion graffiti — yet there have been “no federal prosecutions in any of the cases, even though attacking a place of worship is a federal crime,” Catholic Vote has noted. Meanwhile, scores of pro-life individuals have been charged with FACE Act violations since 2022, by the DOJ’s own admission.