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Three more pro-life activists sentenced under FACE Act

Peter Pinedo By Peter Pinedo for CNA

(Image: Tingey Injury Law Firm/Unsplash.com)

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 31, 2024 / 18:02 pm (CNA).

Three more pro-life activists have been sentenced for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act through their involvement in a 2021 blockade of a Tennessee abortion clinic.

James Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, and Paul Place were sentenced to 90 days in home detention and three years of probation for a “rescue” attempt in which they blockaded the Carafem Health Center Clinic in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, according to reporting by ABC News. The sentences were carried out by U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Tennessee Aleta Trauger.

The sentencing for Eva Edl, an elderly pro-life activist who was also found guilty of being involved in the same rescue attempt, was delayed until August. Edl is 89 years old and a survivor of a communist concentration camp.

This comes after an FBI investigation and the U.S. attorney’s office prosecution led to the four pro-life activists and seven others being found guilty of criminal charges against the FACE Act in April.

An April press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee said that evidence proved that the activists “violated the FACE Act by using physical obstruction over the course of several hours to interfere with the clinic’s employees and a patient, because the clinic was providing, and the patient sought, reproductive health services.”

The blockade was documented in a March 5, 2021, video posted on Facebook. The video shows a large group of pro-life activists ranging from elderly to young children walking into an abortion clinic and blocking the door by sitting in front of it. The activists can be seen singing Christian hymns and praying while police demand they leave. Some comply with the police requests, but some do not, leading to their arrests.

The FACE Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994. It imposes criminal penalties on individuals convicted of “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct” that interferes with access to abortion clinics, places of worship, and pregnancy centers.

Several House and Senate Republicans have been calling for the FACE Act to be repealed because they say it is being unequally applied to target pro-life advocates.

The FACE Act has also garnered criticism for imposing harsh sentences on nonviolent violators such as Paulette Harlow, a 75-year-old woman with a debilitating medical condition who was sentenced to two years in prison for her involvement in a rescue attempt at the Washington Surgi-Clinic, a late term abortion clinic in Washington, D.C. Jean Marshall, 74, and several other pro-life activists were also sentenced to years in prison for the same incident.

According to the Daily Caller, 97% of all 211 FACE Act cases have been against pro-life activists.


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7 Comments

  1. Although the sitin blocking of entrance doors violates the Face Act requiring justice the injustice is manifest the the severe sentencing, especially when compared to the burning of police cars and police stations, the arson and defacing of birth assistance centers, very are arrested or proportionately sentenced. All under the policy of self proclaimed Catholic permitted to desecrate the Holy Eucharist, president Biden.
    This Administration has turned the natural order upside down, with legislation that in effect condemns as evil giving birth to life, the slaughter of infants a good. Not only does Biden suffer from mental dementia, he suffers more from self inflicted moral dementia. Allowing males pretending to be women to dominate female competitive events, to invade women’s locker rooms and toilets. Biden and company promote the indoctrination of children and their sexual mutilation, seizing children from families, refusing to inform parents. He’s supported in his moral dementia by politicians and intellectuals who have zero appreciation of the supreme justice of moral good because of their morally deranged distortion of the concept of liberty.
    And still this pontificate does not address this monumental travesty, but prefers to criticize faithful American clergy, protect morally demented priest Marko Rupnik, praise James Martin SJ.

  2. Although the sitin blocking of entrance doors violates the Face Act requiring justice, the injustice is manifest in the severe sentencing, especially when compared to the burning of police cars and police stations, the arson and defacing of birth assistance centers. Very are arrested or proportionately sentenced. All under the policy of self proclaimed Catholic permitted to desecrate the Holy Eucharist, president Biden.
    This Administration has turned the natural order upside down, with legislation that in effect condemns as evil giving birth to life, the slaughter of infants a good. Not only does Biden suffer from mental dementia, he suffers from self inflicted moral dementia. Allowing males pretending to be women to dominate female competitive sports, to invade women’s locker rooms and toilets. Biden and company promote the indoctrination of children and their sexual mutilation, seizing children from families, refusing to inform parents. He’s supported in his moral dementia by politicians and intellectuals who have zero appreciation of the supreme justice of moral good because of their morally deranged distortion of the concept of liberty.
    And still this pontificate does not address this monumental travesty, but prefers to criticize faithful American clergy, protect morally demented priest Marko Rupnik, praise James Martin SJ.

  3. I celebrate the release of those unjustly imprisoned by Russia, but my first thought at reading this article was “How is the US different in that the federal government persecutes and imprisons persons seeking to save innocent lives and genuinely help mothers in crisis?” Anyone who has worked in the pro-life movement knows numerous women who truly did not experience the choice so touted by Planned Parenthood. In fact some now profile are those women. Numerous factors shoved them towards the abortion facilities, including pressuring family, the fathers of these babies, employers, and the public at large, to name a few.

    Regardless, though, the baby in the womb, described in a 1983 Life cover story, as the “unborn” (topic: surgery for the unborn), is a unique person, often murdered outright despite “viability.” Thus, abortion is the ultimate bullying of another human being, to death, and the disastrous consequences are evident throughout our crumbling society.

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