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Pro-life rescuer Will Goodman being led away by police, June 1, 2018. Lynn Mills / Facebook screen grab

WEST BLOOMFIELD, Michigan, June 1, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Two pro-life “rescuers” under a court order to stay 500 feet away from all abortion centers in the United States were arrested at a Michigan abortion facility Friday morning.

Will Goodman and Monica Migliorino Miller were sidewalk counseling with others outside the Women’s Center of Michigan, a facility run by abortionist Jacob Kalo at 6765 Orchard Lake Road in West Bloomfield county, when they were arrested.

Lynne Mills of Pro-Life Michigan posted photos on Facebook of Goodman being led away in handcuffs between two police officers, and reported they were expected to be brought before a court to answer for the charges that afternoon.

The two were arrested “after God used Monica to save a baby,” wrote Mills.

“They will be going before an unknown judge at 1:30 pm this afternoon, 48th District Court, prayers requested. Please share this. President TRUMP, since you’re in a PARDONING mood, how about pardoning the West Bloomfield FIVE?”

Goodman and Miller and three others were convicted by a six-person jury in February of trespass and obstructing a police officer.  

The charges date back to December 2, 2017, when Miller, Goodman, Patrice Woodworth, Matthew Connolly, and Robert “Doc” Kovaly were arrested after they entered Kalo’s abortion facility with roses and offers of assistance for women in the waiting room in what is called Red Rose Rescue.

The five were sentenced in March by 48th District Court Judge Marc Barron. He imposed a year’s reporting probation with condition that they not go within 500 feet of any abortion center in the United States. He also forbid them from contacting each other.

Barron further sentenced the rescuers to eight days of community services each and imposed fines on each of more than $1000.

The pro-lifers’ attorney Robert Muise of the American Freedom Law Center appealed the convictions and also filed an emergency motion to stay Barron’s sentence.  The five have been waiting over two months for the Appellate Court to rule on the stay of their sentences. 

Miller is director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, which announced in a Thursday press release that she and Goodman would be witnessing for life outside Kalo's abortion center Friday morning in contravention of their probation conditions.

The consequences of doing so “are unknown but could result in the imposition of a jail term,” the CPLS statement said.

Breaching the probation conditions “is not defiance for its own sake. Not at all,” Miller said in the CPLS statement.

“We have every right to exercise our freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion in defense of the unborn. We did nothing wrong when we defended the unborn in the Dec. 2, 2017 Red Rose Rescue. To abide by the unjust sentence and probation conditions is to betray the unborn and is a compromise of our witness on their behalf,” she said.

“The law that sends the unborn to their deaths is unjust — and we simply cannot cooperate in its application which impacts us personally as Christians and as pro-lifers.  We are asking others, who will in no way be affected by Barron's probation conditions, to stand with us. But we plan to be there outside of the Women’s Center witnessing to the sanctity of life where the unborn are put to death.”

Barron’s penalties are unprecedented in their scope and severity, Miller told LifeSiteNews at the time the five rescuers were sentenced.

“Even in the heyday of the Rescue movement, we never saw anything like this, really,” Miller said. 

“I can only come to the conclusion that the judge is in favor of legalized abortion, that he saw that the Red Rose Rescue was a threat to the practice of abortion. Otherwise, we would have had a lenient sentence. … I don’t think any of us expected the harshness of this sentence.”