Mark Houck Archives - Dr. Rich Swier

The Biden administration is “weaponizing” the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act to go after pro-life activists, an attorney who served under George W. Bush and Barack Obama told the Daily Caller.

“The left is out for blood, and Biden’s base is demanding prosecutions and the DOJ is providing them,” said Roger Severino, who served as an attorney at the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division, the same division that enforces the FACE Act.

The Biden administration has charged at least 16 pro-life activists with a maximum of 11 years in prison for alleged violations of the act, which prohibits obstructing people seeking reproduction services. Pro-life activist Mark Houck allegedly pushed an abortion escort to the ground after a verbal confrontation. FBI agents swarmed Houck’s house and took him away at gunpoint months after the initial charges against him were dropped.

The DOJ charged the other 15 pro-lifers with allegedly obstructing entrances of abortion clinics and they face a maximum of 11 years in prison, when, under the law, first time violators of the FACE Act usually face a maximum of six months.

Past administrations have issued multi-year prison sentences for violations of the FACE Act in cases of a fatal shooting, death threats, and damaging an abortion clinic with a Molotov cocktail, while people obstructing entrances to abortion clinics faced monetary fines and restraining orders.

Houck is being charged with the decade-long version of the FACE Act violation because the abortion escort “scraped his arm,” his attorney Peter Breen told the Daily Caller. “The charges shouldn’t apply at all, but even if they did, he’s being overcharged.”

“It’s outrageous that you would take a six-month misdemeanor … and turn it into a 10-year federal felony,” Breen added.

One of the other pro-lifers facing over a decade in prison, Paul Vaughn, never blocked the door of an abortion clinic, but was standing nearby, Breen claimed.

Video of the FBI's arrest of Paul Vaughn of Centerville, Tennessee. DOJ charged him with “conspiracy against rights secured by the FACE Act, and committing FACE Act violations" for blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic. Paul tells me the footage was taken by his wife. pic.twitter.com/KSDvLRSrlF

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) October 7, 2022

Severino, who served under both former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama from 2008 to 2015, said he’s “never heard of a charge being so excessive” as the 11-year maximum prison sentence and $350,000 fine put forth by the current administration for allegedly obstructing abortion clinic doors.

“This is law enforcement run amok. The FACE Act had always been enforced very rarely, because the pro-life movement is a movement of peace,” Severino said. “All of a sudden, they are inventing cases and doing sham prosecutions in an election year for purely political purposes to go after their political enemies.”

The DOJ did not respond to an inquiry from the Daily Caller asking if they have comment on whether the Biden administration has used the FACE Act more excessively than previous administrations.

The FACE Act also protects houses of worship and pro-life pregnancy centers, both of which have been firebombed across the country after the Dobbs decision. Thirty-three churches and 54 pregnancy centers have been attacked, according to the Catholic News Service. The DOJ has not prosecuted any cases of destruction against pro-life centers, Severino stressed.

The effort to arrest pro-lifers is specifically being pushed before the midterms, Department of Homeland Security official under the Trump administration, Ken Cuccinelli, told the Daily Caller.

“This has nothing to do with public safety. This is political virtue signaling to the radical-left base that has control of this administration,” Cuccinelli said.

“I think it will thoroughly backfire on them. I can’t think of a way they’ll get one more vote because they arrest these people, but I guarantee you, a lot [more] pro-lifers will stay home than might have for the midterm election,” he added.

AUTHOR

DIANA GLEBOVA

White House reporter.

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Biden DOJ Trying To ‘Intimidate People Of Faith,’ Says Lawyer For Pro-Life Activist Arrested By FBI

Pro-Life Groups Sound The Alarm Over Repeated Attacks, Call Out FBI, DOJ For Not Doing Enough

Three of America’s most powerful medical groups have teamed up to demand government protection for doctors and hospitals which provide transgender medicine and surgery for children.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the Children’s Hospital Association have sent an open letter to US Attorney-General Merrick Garland urging him to “investigate the organizations, individuals, and entities coordinating, provoking, and carrying out bomb threats and threats of personal violence against children’s hospitals and physicians across the US.”

But that’s not all. The troika also want the government and social media companies to gag critics who spread “disinformation”.

“The attacks,” they write, “are rooted in an intentional campaign of disinformation, where a few high-profile users on social media share false and misleading information targeting individual physicians and hospitals, resulting in a rapid escalation of threats, harassment, and disruption of care across multiple jurisdictions.”

One of these “high-profile users”, investigative journalist Christopher Rufo, responded immediately. “I have a message for Attorney General Merrick Garland: you can threaten us; you can mobilize the FBI against us; you can drag us out of our homes in a pre-dawn raid. But we are not going to stop reporting on radical gender surgeries on minors.”

“Mobilizing the FBI” sounds absurd — but it’s not. The FBI, which reports to the Department of Justice and the Attorney-General, recently arrested a pro-life activist, Mark Houck, over an alleged altercation in front of a Philadelphia abortion clinic in October last year. It was an event so petty that the District Court of Philadelphia threw the case out.

The complainant went to the FBI. Houck’s wife claims that about 25 agents raided their home with guns drawn, handcuffed her husband in front of their seven children, and hauled him away. The FBI disputes her version of events and Houck has pleaded not guilty and has been freed on bail.

But the incident shows what could happen if the Attorney-General decides to take the troika’s letter seriously.

What he hasn’t taken seriously is violence against pro-lifers. That’s a real issue. An elderly pro-life volunteer was shot in Michigan last month, although she was not seriously hurt.

The activist group Catholic Vote has documented 73 incidents in which pregnancy support centers and offices of pro-life groups have been attacked and vandalized since early May.

The militant abortion rights group Jane’s Revenge’s signature message is: “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either.” It has claimed responsibility for at least 18 attacks but not a single arrest has been made.

Admittedly, there have been hostile posts on social media about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s transgender clinic after The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh exposed its activities and business practices. Staff at the Boston Children’s Hospital’s Center for Gender Surgery have been barraged with hostile messages on social media and there was one bomb threat. Perhaps these prompted the troika’s letter.

Violence must always be condemned. Anyone who threatens or attacks doctors and hospitals providing transgender medicine should be punished. But even the letter from the troika did not mention a single act of violence. No fire-bombing, no graffiti, no vandalism. Certainly no one has been shot.

What must be condemned is the violence that the billion-dollar transgender industry imposes upon American children as it pockets their cash. Mastectomies and castrations are the handiwork of deranged ideologues, not real scientists.

In science and medicine, the way to silence critics is to present clear and irrefutable evidence, not to threaten them with deplatforming, cancellation, and FBI handcuffs. But that’s essentially what three of America’s leading medical organisations are doing. It’s the kind of tactic that the Soviets used to enforce the Marxist-Leninist bogus biology of Lysenkoism.

The troika asserts that transgender clinics are providing “evidence-based health care”. But that evidence is being challenged by leading medical authorities inside and outside the United States, by the lived experience of transitioners, and by numerous highly competent journalists. The most toxic disinformation of all is oozing out from the transgender industry itself.

The open letter doesn’t mention any of the following developments in the world of transgender medicine:

In the United Kingdom, the Tavistock clinic – which has been “the model for treating trans people around the world” — was forced to close its doors. It is not, according to an interim report by a professor of paediatrics, Hilary Cass, “a safe or viable long-term option in view of concerns about lack of peer review and the ability to respond to the increasing demand.” In fact, she went on to say that there are “gaps in the evidence base regarding all aspects of gender care for children and young people, from epidemiology through to assessment, diagnosis, support, counselling and treatment.”
In France, the National Academy of Medicine declared earlier this year: “great medical caution must be taken in children and adolescents, given the vulnerability, particularly psychological, of this population and the many undesirable effects and even serious complications that can be caused by some of the therapies available”.
In Sweden, the National Board of Health and Welfare issued new guidelines for gender-affirming care in February. It said, based on current knowledge: “the risks of puberty suppressing treatment with GnRH-analogues and gender-affirming hormonal treatment currently outweigh the possible benefits, and that the treatments should be offered only in exceptional cases.”
In Finland, the Finnish Health Authority (PALKO/COHERE) reversed course in 2020. Its new guidance stated that “psychotherapy, rather than puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, should be the first-line treatment for gender-dysphoric youth”.

The real explanation for this letter must be that doctors providing transgender medicine are running scared. They’re afraid that their house of cards will be blown away by the facts. But if they can’t persuade, they can still bloviate, bluster, and bully. And that’s what they’re doing.

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