Federal prosecutors won a guilty plea for pro-abortion vandalism committed in 2022, but they have a long way to go in punishing all such crimes, according to a pro-life group’s report.
Texas man Ethan Skorick pled guilty this week to violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act by writing “forced birth is murder” and other slogans on a pregnancy resource building in May 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday. However, the outgoing Biden administration is nowhere near solving dozens of similar cases documented by CatholicVote — though it has targeted 21 pro-life activists under the FACE Act.
Texas Defendant Pleads Guilty to Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act Violationhttps://t.co/1AZjEh3hG8
— DOJ Civil Rights Division (@CivilRights) January 16, 2025
CatholicVote’s ongoing database cites 95 reported instances of vandalism, arson, threats or attacks against pro-life pregnancy resource centers or advocacy groups since the preemptive leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson opinion on May 2, 2022. The leak sparked pro-abortion protests outside justices’ homes in violation of federal law, which the DOJ reportedly instructed U.S. Marshals not to make arrests for.
The Dobbs ruling held there is no constitutional right to abortion, overturning the court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
A 4-year report from the DOJ Civil Rights Division’s says it has only prosecuted 57 people for crimes against “reproductive health” centers, which include both pro-life centers and abortion clinics.
The maximum punishment for one first-time violation of the FACE Act is a year in prison and a fine.
One case that sparked outrage from Congress involved the DOJ raiding the home of Mark Houck, a pro-life Catholic who pushed a man who was harassing his son outside of an abortion clinic, and threatening him with up to 11 years in prison on FACE Act charges. A jury acquitted Houck in January 2023.
A Tuesday letter sent to President-elect Donald Trump from the conservative law firm Thomas More Society said the DOJ has targeted or jailed 21 “peaceful pro-life Americans” under President Joe Biden for protesting or obstructing entrance to abortion clinics. One of the names in the letter was Paulette Harlow, a 75-year-old woman with severe health issues who was sentenced to two years in prison last June.
“While Biden’s prosecutors almost entirely ignored the firebombing and vandalism of hundreds of pro-life churches and pregnancy centers, they viciously pursued pro-life Americans, obtaining convictions against them under the federal ‘FACE Act’ … and the Ku Klux Klan Act’s ‘Conspiracy Against Rights’ felony provisions,” the letter reads. “But these individuals participated in mere peaceable civil disobedience, in the heralded tradition of the American Civil Rights activists.”
“We respectfully urge that all 21 of them detailed here are richly deserving of full and unconditional pardons,” the law firm told Trump.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding its progress in solving the pregnancy center vandalism cases.
Outgoing Attorney General Merrick Garland testified to senators in March 2023 that it is “quite easy” for the DOJ to catch pro-life protesters because they protest “in daylight.”
“Those who are attacking the pregnancy resources centers, which is a hard thing to do, are doing this at night in the dark,” Garland told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The president of Loreto House, the Texas pregnancy center that was vandalized, told the Daily Caller News Foundation he was “surprised the DOJ had indicted” Skorick “just before the election.”
“The case was on their desk for about a year and a half,” Randy Bollig said in an email. “I hope this will discourage the pro-aborts from vandalizing pregnancy centers.”
“It is time for justice to be brought to the criminals who have damaged hundreds of Catholic churches and pregnancy care centers,” Bollig told the DCNF. “We will pray for conversion of heart of this troubled young man.”
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