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DOJ prosecutors say they’re applying the law equally in bringing felony conspiracy charges against pro-lifers, but why aren’t they then using the same law against violent leftist protesters who firebomb pregnancy centers, harass Jews, or shut down tunnels and bridges?
Seven Christian pro-life activists were convicted on Tuesday for their role in protests at Michigan abortion clinics, and are now facing the possibility of up to a decade in prison.
Among them is 89-year-old Eva Edl, who survived a concentration camp in communist Yugoslavia as a child.
The group was found guilty by a jury of not only violating the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances (FACE) Act but also with violating the more serious “conspiracy against rights,” a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a hefty fine.
In addition to Edl, those convicted are Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Joel Curry, Justin Phillips, and Carl and Eva Zastrow.
The charges arose from what the prosecution says was a violent protest.
The FACE Act prohibits blocking access to abortion clinics, pro-life pregnancy centers, or churches.
The defendants say they never even went inside the Sterling Heights, Michigan, clinic, but instead sat outside on the sidewalk, where they prayed, sang hymns, and encouraged women to keep their babies. Edl and Idoni were also convicted for a similar protest in Saginaw, Michigan.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has pursued similar charges against numerous other pro-lifers conducting similar protests and has been criticized for its zealous prosecution of those protestors.
The Thomas More Society, which is advising Gallagher on his case, has filed a motion to have the conspiracy against rights charges dismissed. The judge is expected to hear that case before sentencing.
The conspiracy against rights law was passed in 1870 to stop the Ku Klux Klan from oppressing black people. A violation of the law takes place when “two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person…in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same.”
The law had never been used against pro-lifers for protesting an abortion clinic until March 2022, when DOJ trial attorney Sanjay Patel suggested those charged with FACE Act violations could additionally be charged under the law because the protests are often coordinated, involve more than one defendant, and the FACE Act protects a federal “right.”
Thomas More argues that Patel reasoned that the charge was appropriate because a conspiracy against rights violation is always a felony, even if the underlying violation is a misdemeanor. As such, the violations are punishable by up to 10 years in prison and the government “is not required to prove an overt act or substantial step in furtherance of the agreement.”
Since then, the DOJ has arrested and charged dozens of pro-life protesters for violating both the FACE Act and conspiracy against rights.
Carl Zastrow, Idoni, and Gallagher were among those convicted of conspiracy charges earlier this year in another case for a protest in Tennessee, though Eva Zastrow and Edl faced only misdemeanor violations in the Tennessee case and not conspiracy charges.
The defense asserts that Congress never intended for peaceful violations of the FACE Act to carry such harsh penalties. They wrote, “under the Government’s transmogrified combination of [section] 248 and 241, a non-violent participant in a group-oriented rescue can go to jail for the same amount of time as a violent, multi-time offender who inflicts bodily injury on another while acting in isolation…notwithstanding the adoption of the Kennedy Amendment to avoid just such a result…This result is absurd.”
What many would say is absurd is the prosecution of Edl, who survived a Yugoslavian concentration camp under communist dictator Josef Tito only to be facing prison again in the United States for taking part in numerous peaceful protests.
She has explained that her experiences in the concentration camp have motivated her to intercede to protect unborn children.
“When we were rounded up to be killed, we were placed in cattle cars, and our train was headed toward the extermination camp. What if citizens of my country would have overcome their fear and a number of them stood on those railroad tracks between the gate of the entrance to the death camp and the train?
The train would have to stop. And while the guards on those trains would be busy rounding up the ones that were in front of the train, another group could have come in, pried open our cattle car and possibly set us free. But nobody did.”
She said that she has heard that people lined up by the railroad and wept, “but that didn’t help us any.”
Her goal is to try to actually save the children under threat at abortion clinics, not just weep for them, she explains.
“So when we place our bodies between the woman and the clinic, we buy time to get our sidewalk counselors the opportunity to speak with women and hopefully open their hearts with love for their babies and let their babies live. After all, we offer them everything there is, including adoptions. I’ve offered to adopt babies on the spot … we’re standing between the killer and the victim.”
Edl very likely could spend the rest of her life in prison for a peaceful protest intended to save the lives of babies.
So let’s reiterate: Under the “conspiracy against rights” law, a person is guilty when “two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person…in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same.”
However, there’s second part to that law that was relevant to Klansmen in 1870 and remains relevant today. That part says that someone is also guilty of “conspiracy against rights” if “two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured.”
Now let’s first remember that abortion is not a right secured by the Constitution or federal law.
But you know what rights are protected under the Constitution and federal law? The right to life, the right to private property, the right to be secure in your property, the right of free movement, the right to free speech, and the right to freely exercise your religion.
Yet when ANTIFA rioters, wearing coverings over their faces join in coordinated violent actions, they aren’t charged with conspiracy against rights.
When Black Lives Matter rioters wearing masks burn down businesses, steal from people, beat people in the streets, or kill people, they aren’t charged with conspiracy against rights.
When anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rioters harass and threaten Jewish people in major U.S. cities, vandalize their homes and businesses, trap them in buildings, or refuse to let them cross campus or go to class, they aren’t charged with conspiracy against rights.
When pro-abortion terrorists firebomb pro-life centers, threaten pro-lifers, and disrupt worship services, they aren’t charged with conspiracy against rights.
When climate activists shut down streets, bridges, and tunnels, trapping thousands of people in their cars and shutting down their right to freely move, they aren’t charged with conspiracy against rights.
Those are groups of people, often disguising themselves, conspiring together to harm, block, or intimidate people in order to deny them their rights to engage in commerce, provide charitable services, freely travel to their destination, worship and exercise their religion, speak a different point of view, or to even exist and participate in public life as a Jew.
We don’t see the federal government going after them with conspiracy charges.
We do see the DOJ targeting 89-year-old concentration camp survivors who sit outside abortion clinics and encourage women not to kill their child. The DOJ started ambitiously enforcing the FACE Act against pro-lifers in 2022.
We have written on how the DOJ has not equally pursued FACE Act charges against pro-abortion protesters but just to sum up: There were hundreds of attacks and overt threats against pregnancy centers and churches following the leak of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, but the DOJ has arrested just six suspects involved in three of those attacks and brought a conspiracy charge in just one case.
There is little doubt that the DOJ is weaponizing the law to target its ideological opponents, a clear indicator of a government bent on flexing its power. Nothing should be more concerning to Americans than that harsh reality.
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