Press Office of US Representative Chip Roy (Left), wolterke / stock.adobe.com (Right)
CV NEWSFEED // Congressman Chip Roy, R-TX, on Friday published an essay calling for the repeal of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The Biden-Harris administration has used the FACE Act to prosecute dozens of pro-life Americans for demonstrating outside of abortion facilities.
The FACE Act was signed into law in 1994 by Democratic President Bill Clinton and creates felony charges for anyone who,
[by] force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services.
The FACE Act offers similar protections for houses of worship by making it a felony to interfere with people attending services.
Roy’s article focused on 89-year-old Hungarian prison camp survivor Eva Edl, a pro-life activist who now faces prison time after the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Justice targeted her under the FACE Act.
Edl’s family immigrated to the U.S. after spending 18 months in a communist prison camp at the end of World War II. Edl is now joined by six other defendants soon to be federally sentenced for protesting at various Michigan abortion facilities.
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In addition to the FACE Act, the administration is also using the “KKK” Act and Conspiracy Against Rights statute to compound charges that would carry prison sentences of upwards of 10 years.
The Conspiracy Against Rights statute makes it
[u]nlawful for two or more persons to agree to injure, threaten, or intimidate a person in the United States in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States or because of his or her having exercised such a right.
“Unlike most conspiracy statutes, §241 does not require, as an element, the commission of an overt act,” the statute states. “The offense is always a felony, even if the underlying conduct would not, on its own, establish a felony violation of another criminal civil rights statute.”
The combination of the two laws means that Edl now faces living out the end of her life in prison as well as having to pay a $350,000 fine. But the elderly survivor far from the only targeted by the current administration.
“We were able to confirm that as of May 2024, the Biden-Harris DOJ had charged 24 FACE Act cases against 55 defendants,” Roy wrote in his essay. “Just two of these cases” were brought against people who attacked pro-life pregnancy resource centers or churches, he noted.
“This means that nearly 92% of all Biden-Harris FACE Act cases were brought against pro-life demonstrators,” Roy pointed out, “despite over 285 churches and 94 pregnancy resource centers and pro-life groups being attacked and vandalized since May 2022.”
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“Where fear like this is planted, tyranny flourishes,” Roy argued.
The congressman ended his article by calling for a repeal of the FACE Act and suggesting new legislation to protect pro-life Americans.
“To stop this growing weaponization and intimidation, Congress should stop this targeted harassment and ensure the FACE Act is repealed,” he wrote:
Allowing it to remain means permitting bureaucrats at the highest levels of government to unequally apply the law, target pro-life Americans with unwarranted retaliation, and shield a radical abortion industry. That is why I am proud to have introduced H.R. 5577, the FACE Act Repeal Act, in order to finally hold this administration accountable and eradicate this unconstitutional threat to all Americans.
