Using law enforcement to intimidate political opponents is something you’d find in Communist China, Cuba, North Korea, or other enlightened corners of the world where the government doesn’t tolerate dissent.
That’s what’s happening in America on the abortion political battlefield. On the one hand, you have federal authorities sitting back and allowing domestic terrorists to firebomb pregnancy help centers. More than 50 bombings have occurred since the Dobbs decision dropped and there has not been one, single arrest or indictment for any crime committed against abortion counseling centers.
On the other hand, the Justice Department was proud to announce they had arrested 11 citizens for violation the FACE Act — the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances act that the United States government has discovered and is now using as a weapon to stifle dissent about abortion.
Or is it payback for Dobbs? With this bunch of gangsters, it’s hard to tell.
The 11 hardened criminals arrested for protesting in front of abortion centers included Chester Gallagher, 73, of Lebanon, Tennessee, and Eva Edl, 87, of Aiken, South Carolina. Perhaps they were threatening abortion customers with their walkers.
The press release on the indictment is not to be believed.
The indictment alleges that, beginning in February 2021, Chester Gallagher utilized social media to promote a series of anti-abortion events scheduled for March 4-7, 2021, in the Nashville area. Other co-conspirators then utilized Facebook to coordinate travel and logistics and to identify other participants for the blockade. On March 4, 2021, Coleman Boyd and Chester Gallager advertised the blockade of the Carafem Health Center Clinic, in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, which was planned for the following day. In his social media post, Gallagher referred to the blockade as a “rescue.” Boyd also began a Facebook livestream broadcast of the clinic blockade at 7:45 a.m. on March 5, 2021. This livestream broadcast was titled, in part, “Mt. Juliet, TN Rescue March 5, 2021,” and livestreamed the blockade event as his coconspirators and others blocked the clinic’s entry doors and prevented a patient and an employee from entering. The livestream also broadcast members of the group attempting to engage a patient and her companion as Boyd told his livestream audience that the patient was a “mom coming to kill her baby.”
Mr. Gallagher was visited by an FBI SWAT team while he was out of town. The other ten pro-life activists received calls from the FBI telling them to turn themselves in.
For much of that release, try substituting “Black Lives Matter activists” for “co-conspirators.” BLM activists used social media extensively during the George Floyd riots. Their members did live stream broadcasts of the protests. They blockaded police departments. And yet, one form of protest was not only allowed but was also celebrated in the media.
Strangely, there’s no video of the protesters using “force and physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, and interfere with employees of the clinic and a patient who was seeking reproductive health services.” In a day and age when everyone and their dog has a camera—and especially abortion clinic workers who are supposed to document such incidents—it seems weird that no video of this crime appears to exist.
The protesters want to be arrested. That’s how they draw attention to their cause. But arresting them for trespassing is far different than arresting them for violating the 1994 FACE act law, which was never supposed to facilitate abortions by violating the fundamental rights of protesters. It’s only very recently that the Biden Justice Department has begun to use the FACE Act as a cudgel to suppress legitimate protests.
This is an extremely troubling turn in the abortion debate, and the silence of the left about pro-life centers being bombed constitutes a violent assault on American liberties.
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