Posted on 05/07/2024 1:28:14 AM PDT by Morgana
The Biden administration’s persecution against pro-life Christians in America is getting worse.
Just days after LifeNews reported that federal prison officials put a pro-life woman in solitary confinement for 22 days for sharing food with fellow prisoners, a new report indicates that Biden officials are preventing a pro-life Christian from attending church.
Paulette Harlow is one of a dozen pro-life Americans the Biden administration has targeted with prosecution for protesting abortions while it ignores hundreds of pro-abortion crimes committed across America. Harlow, who is 73, could be sentenced to up to 11 years in prison for protesting abortion.
While Americans stage sit ins across the country to protest Israel or the use of oil, only pro-life Americans have a federal law targeting them for engaging in similar protests at abortion centers. Although the law has rarely been used to prosecute pro-life advocates, Joe Biden’s radical abortion agenda includes ramping up prosecutions and he’s already gotten several pro-life people convicted under the federal FACE law.
Harlow faces multiple medical issue, but now she’s potentially headed to prison for 11 years for participating in a rescue at an abortion center in Washington D.C. that kills babies in late-term abortions.
Harlow after a bench trial of violating the law during the protest, which has seen multiple pro-life advocates be convicted. There is a possibility that Harlow, if she loses her case on appeal, may serve her prison term under house arrest because she has a significant medical condition.
Harlow is currently under house arrest and a new report indicates she “has been refused allowance to attend Mass at a Catholic church while under house arrest despite her express request to Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly while in court.”
Biden officials specifically requested that the juge deny her First Amendment religious freedom to attend church.
“After Harlow’s legal counsel requested the religious accommodation for his client, who is a devout practicing Catholic, DOJ lead prosecutor Sanjay Patel specifically motioned that the request be denied, a motion that Judge Kollar-Kotelly obligingly conceded,” the report adds. “In a move that appears to be vindictive and targeted, Patel, who wanted Harlow incarcerated immediately, settled for house arrest with restrictions placed on all movement outside the house with the minimal exception of visits to the doctor, expressly denying allowance to attend Mass.”
Patel had previously mocked Harlow’s health conditions in open court. Because of her poor health, which includes debilitating diabetes, Hashimoto’s disease, and severe back pain requiring the use of a wheelchair, Harlow was transported from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C., in a special-needs van equipped with a mattress for her to lie down. The elderly woman underwent a procedure to alleviate throat strictures from a hiatal hernia three days before her pre-trial hearing on October 20 and was prevented from standing trial in September because she was in the hospital. Her trial was interrupted periodically to allow her to rest or receive medical attention, and she was escorted around the courthouse in a wheelchair.
Patel mocked her medical accommodations as an attempt to “pull a stunt” in an effort to thwart the trial. His mockery shocked those present in court.
When other pro-life advocates were arrested, tried and convicted under the law after Biden’s DOJ pursued prison time for the pro-life protest, Harlow condemned the trials as political persecution and said she was “not surprised” by the verdicts.
Harlow criticized the Biden administration for selectively enforcing the FACE law, which is designed to protect not only abortion centers but pro-life pregnancy centers. She said Biden is targeting pro-life Americans while virtually ignoring almost 100 attacks on pregnancy centers.
“Because the trial was very, very biased,” she said. “And to try to label them [defendants] as violent, or any of the pro-life people as violent is very, very false, and it’s just meant to sway people away from what we’re trying to do. And what we’re trying to do is save lives.”
The FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act prohibits individuals from attempting to injure, intimidate, or interfere (by use of force, threat of force, or physical obstruction) with anyone obtaining or performing an abortion. The pro-life advocates who have been convicted say they were not engaging in any violence or attempting to injure or intimidate anyone, but merely engaging in their First Amendment rights to protest.
The pro-lifers on trial conducted a rescue at the Washington Surgi-Clinic operated by the notorious late-term abortionist Cesare Santangelo who was busted by a LiveAction undercover investigator for admitting that he would not help a child with life-saving efforts if he or she survived a late-term abortion. He emphatically stated that a nearby hospital’s efforts to save the life of a child he was trying to abort was “the stupidest thing they could have done.”
Lauren Handy and Herb Geraghty cited those videos as the reason for the rescue and protest at the abortion business because of the concern babies might be left to die. They chained themselves to the entrace of the abortion center in an attempt to stop abortions.
Last March, some of the rescuers currently on trial were given 115 aborted babies by the driver of a medical waste van outside Santangelo’s late-term abortion facility. The babies were well-developed – second and possibly third trimester. Their remains are still in a vault at the D.C. medical examiner’s office.
In October 2020, about two months after the remains were obtained, the nine pro-lifers blocked the entrance of the abortion facility and protesting abortion.
Responding t0 the verdicts, Thomas More Society, the pro-life legal group that defended Handy, called out the judge and Biden administration for their efforts “to chill pro-life speech and activism.”
“A federal court jury fraught with bias has delivered the Biden Department of Justice the conviction of several life advocates. The group of peaceful pro-life citizens were charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act along with a conspiracy against ‘rights’ that the United States Supreme Court has not found in the Constitution. The defendants were arrested in March 2022, a year and a half after their alleged actions outside of a Washington, DC abortion facility,” the legal group said.
“Handy and her Thomas More Society defense team will appeal this decision, handed down today in United States District Court for the District of Columbia,” it said.
Martin Cannon, TMS senior attorney, told LifeNews: “We are, of course, disappointed with the outcome. Ms. Handy has been condemned for her efforts to protect the lives of innocent preborn human beings. We are preparing an appeal and will continue to defend those who fight for life against a Biden Department of Justice that seems intent on prosecuting those who decry abortion and present it as it is—the intentional killing of children in utero.”
DC = District of Corruption
Absolutely Disgusting actions from a US Court system.
We must save Democracy.
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