NASHVILLE, Tennessee (LifeSiteNews) — Six pro-life advocates were convicted of federal felonies on Tuesday for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act during a 2021 peaceful protest at an abortion facility just outside Nashville, Tennessee, a clinic that has since been forced to stop providing abortions.
A jury delivered its guilty verdict late Tuesday for six pro-lifers who participated in a March 2021 “rescue” at the Carafem Health Center Clinic in Mt. Joliet, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. The verdict comes in spite of the fact that, just a year and a half later, the same facility was forced to stop committing abortions to comply with Tennessee’s pro-life legislation after the June 2022 overthrow of Roe v. Wade.
The pro-life advocates who were convicted Tuesday are Chester Gallagher of Lebanon, Tennessee; Heather Idoni and Calvin Zastrow of Michigan; Coleman Boyd of Bolton, Mississippi, and Dennis Green of Cumberland, Virginia.
Paul Vaughn of Centerville, Tennessee, the Christian husband and father of 11 who was arrested at gunpoint at his family home in 2022, was also convicted.
Paul Vaughn, his wife, and his 11 children. Their father now faces 11 years in prison. https://t.co/mQKv4BR8wF pic.twitter.com/npEGx8gMUd
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) January 30, 2024
READ: FBI raids pro-life father of 11 with guns drawn in front of children weeks after Mark Houck raid
Former rescuer Caroline Davis had additionally been charged in the Tennessee rescue and pleaded guilty in October 2023. Per The Tennessean, Davis is now “cooperating with the government” and agreed to “testify against her co-defendants at trial.” She previously testified against defendants in a separate Washington, D.C. rescue as well, which saw all participants charged with FACE Act violations and immediately incarcerated.
Like Davis, Idoni had also participated in the Washington, D.C. rescue. She was convicted of violating the FACE Act in that instance as well and has been incarcerated pending sentencing.
Each of the protesters involved in the Tennessee rescue now faces as many as 10 1/2 years behind bars and up to $260,000 in fines.
Sentencing is slated to take place July 2.
The convictions come after a federal grand jury in Nashville brought the indictments against the 11 pro-lifers in October 2022, including the six convicted Tuesday, alleging that they “aided and abetted by one another, used force and physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, and interfere with employees of the clinic and a patient who was seeking reproductive health services [abortions].” Concentration camp survivor Eva Edl, then 87, was among those charged, LifeSite reported at the time.
Despite the convictions, the rescue in question was markedly peaceful. Participants stood inside the building, sang hymns, and some sat in front of doors to prevent entry and exit.
A recording from the planned protest, made public by pro-life organization Live Action, shows pro-lifers standing and sitting inside a hallway of the building, singing hymns, praying, and refusing to leave. Some of the pro-lifers sat in front of doors in a passive effort to prevent employees and patients from proceeding with abortions. On one occasion, the protesters attempted to engage an apparently abortion-seeking woman in conversation about the preciousness of her preborn baby.
Supporters of the pro-lifers have responded to their conviction with outrage and disappointment.
Thomas More Society senior counsel Steve Crampton said in a statement that the verdict was “a frustrating setback” for his client Vaughn, “for his family, and for the extended pro-life community, which has rallied support for Paul from the day of his arrest in front of his wife and children by heavily armed FBI agents, on through the trial.”
Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah accused the Biden administration of having a double standard when it comes to the FACE Act, which is ostensibly meant to protect pro-life pregnancy centers and churches in addition to abortion facilities.
“[T]he Biden administration incarcerates people for praying at abortion clinics while ignoring violent acts at churches and pregnancy centers,” Sen. Lee said on X. “So many camels. So much obsessive attention paid to harmless things mistaken for gnats.”
Republicans concerned about the Biden administration’s focus on pro-life advocates to the apparent 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 alleged 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 contended that the Biden administration has “selectively enforced” the FACE Act to go after pro-lifers while failing to do enough to prosecute 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.
For their part, Democrats have alleged that Republicans are spreading “disinformation” and a “false narrative,” claiming the federal government is not targeting pro-lifers, who they said posed more of a threat than pro-abortion activists. Those claims come despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of recent abortion-related political violence has been targeted at pro-life organizations, a fact acknowledged by FBI director Chris Wray.