President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a memorandum Friday pledging to end the “weaponization” of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and dismissing three ongoing FACE Act cases.
The FACE Act is a 1994 law that prohibits “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services.” The act was written to equally protect abortion clinics, pro-life pregnancy resource centers, and churches; however, 97 percent of FACE Act cases since the law’s inception have been against pro-life advocates.
The Biden administration used the law to aggressively prosecute, and sometimes imprison, pro-life activists. Data obtained by Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-TX) office found that, in less than four years, Biden’s DOJ accounted for more than a quarter of all 211 FACE prosecutions since the law’s inception. At least 55 FACE Act cases were prosecuted during the Biden administration, only a handful of which were against pro-abortion attacks on pregnancy centers, despite the increase in attacks against pro-life pregnancy centers and churches following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
“President Trump campaigned on the promise of ending the weaponization of the federal government and has recently directed all federal departments and agencies to identify and correct the past weaponization of law enforcement. To many Americans, prosecutions and civil actions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (“FACE Act”) have been the prototypical example of this weaponization. And for good reason,” the DOJ memo reads.
“Even though more than 100 crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life organizations, and churches were attacked in the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision, nearly all prosecutions under the FACE Act have been against pro-life protesters. That is not the even-handed administration of justice,” the memo continues. […]
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