Repeal FACE and Stop Putting Pro-Life Americans in Prison

A damning new government report confirms what many conservatives have long suspected: the Biden administration systematically weaponized federal law to target, harass, and even imprison pro-life Americans, all while turning a blind eye to violence against churches and pregnancy centers.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy released the report on April 14, exposing how President Joe Biden’s DOJ abused the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act—known as the FACE Act—to prosecute pro-life activists at the urging of powerful abortion lobby groups. Every American who cares about equal and impartial justice under the law should read it.

In the end, the report leads irrevocably to one conclusion: the FACE Act should be repealed.

Congress passed the FACE Act in 1994 to protect abortion facilities, pro-life pregnancy centers, and churches from obstruction, force, and destruction. On paper, it applies equally to three. In practice, under President Biden, it became something else entirely: a federal hunting license to punish political opponents holding pro-life views.

Follow LifeNews.com on Instagram for pro-life pictures and videos.

The numbers tell the story. According to the report, over the law’s 30-year history, a staggering 25% of all FACE Act prosecutions were brought in just a two-year stretch (2022-2024) under the Biden administration. Even more striking, pro-lifers were the targets a remarkable 97% of the time.

This wasn’t a coincidence but federal policy.

Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization returned abortion policy to the states, Attorney General Merrick Garland publicly vowed to “tirelessly protect and advance reproductive freedom” and deploy the FACE Act to do it.

Garland revived the National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers and set it loose. What followed was a coordinated campaign between federal prosecutors and pro-abortion organizations that should alarm every American who believes in impartial law enforcement.

The task force worked hand in glove with the National Abortion Federation (NAF), Planned Parenthood, and the Feminist Majority Foundation. It received tips, dossiers, and investigation targets from these activist groups. The NAF was singled out by task force members as an “MVP” for supplying information used to identify targets and obtain warrants. One task force member even served as a reference on NAF’s application for a private grant.

The report also details highly disturbing conduct by prosecutors once prosecutions of pro-life activists were underway.

In Michigan, DOJ officials pushed to prosecute nonviolent pro-life protesters under the FACE Act, something those officials acknowledged was unprecedented. Internal e-mails show federal prosecutors acknowledging the “posture of the administration” had shifted, however, driven in part by the passage in 2021 of Texas’ Heartbeat Act. The prosecution was greenlighted in May 2022, just days after the Dobbs draft opinion leaked.

After the defendants had already been convicted of misdemeanor trespassing in state court and paid a $225 fine, DOJ officials took the unusual step of insisting upon federal prosecution because the activists would “continue to engage in obstructive conduct” due to their “strongly held ideologies.”

In other words, the DOJ concluded that the only way to deter committed pro-life activists from engaging in pro-life activism was to throw them in prison.

At trial, prosecutors fretted about a “very Catholic magistrate” judge and worked to screen Christians from the jury pool. In a private email drafting her closing argument, a DOJ prosecutor described pro-life Christians as “culty.”

This kind of comment shows that these were not impartial law enforcement officers but enforcers of leftist ideology.

The FACE Act has always rested on shaky constitutional grounds, relying on Congress’s interstate commerce power to regulate what are fundamentally local protests—conduct already covered by state and local trespass and vandalism laws. Biden’s DOJ simply revealed what the law was always susceptible to becoming: a political cudgel.

The report makes the case for repealing the FACE Act or limiting its application to churches.

Unlike abortion, the right to free exercise of religion is an expressly protected constitutional right. Moreover, state law more than adequately protects against criminal trespassing, vandalism, and true acts of violence. The FACE Act is not a necessary preventative, and as long as it remains on the books in its current form, it will remain a temptation for future administrations to exploit for partisan ends.

More broadly, this report is a warning. The rule of law is not an abstraction reserved for law school classrooms. It is, as John Adams wrote, the very foundation of a republic—“an Empire of Laws, and not of Men.” When prosecutors swear an oath to the Constitution and then use the power of the federal government to destroy their political opponents, that foundation cracks.

The Biden DOJ cracked it. The American people deserve to know exactly how, and now it must make sure this kind of abuse never happens again

LifeNews Note: Ryan Bangert is senior vice president of strategic initiatives and special counsel to the president for Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal). This column originally appeared at Daily Signal.

The post Repeal FACE and Stop Putting Pro-Life Americans in Prison appeared first on LifeNews.com.