Report: 97% of All FACE Act Prosecutions Target Pro-Life Activists

Department of Justice (DOJ) data reveals how the Biden administration has used the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act to specifically target pro-life activists, despite the statute’s original intent of protecting abortion clinics as well as pro-life pregnancy centers and houses of worship.

The FACE Act, which former President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994, prohibits “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain or provide reproductive health services.” Between 1994 to 2024, there have been approximately 211 FACE Act cases — 205 of those cases have been brought against pro-life activists, while only six have been brought against pro-abortion activists, the Daily Caller reported, citing data provided by Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-TX) office. 

Ultimately, the data shows that 97 percent of all FACE Act cases have been against pro-life activists since the law’s passage, according to the report. 

The data also appears to confirm the suspicions of Republican lawmakers and pro-life activists that the Biden administration has used the statute to aggressively go after pro-life activists, despite the increase in attacks against pro-life pregnancy centers and churches following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. The decision was first leaked in May of 2022 before being officially published on June 24, 2022, and ended the invented constitutional right to abortion, sending the issue back to individual states and their elected representatives. 

At least 55 FACE Act cases have been prosecuted during the Biden administration, only five of which involved pro-abortion attacks on pregnancy centers, the Daily Caller found, alleging the data “confirms conservative fears” of a “Biden weaponized justice system.”

“In less than four years, Biden’s DOJ has accounted for over a quarter of all FACE prosecutions and approximately 24 percent of cases targeting pro-life activists, the data demonstrates,” the report states.

Several of these cases have involved FBI raids of pro-life activists homes, the jailing of Christian grandmothers, and even the prosecution of an 87-year-old communist concentration camp survivor. 

The DOJ reportedly did not respond to the Caller’s questions directly but pointed the outlet to its website. The FBI did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment by time of publication. 

RELATED — Explainer: DOJ Uses KKK-Era Charge to Extend Prison Time for Pro-Life Activists

FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted in November 2022 that approximately 70 percent of abortion-related threats of violence in the United States since the Dobbs decision have been against pro-life groups. There have been at least 90 attacks of pro-life groups and pregnancy centers and approximately 276 attacks on Catholic churches following the leak of the Dobbs decision, according to trackers kept by CatholicVote.

In December 2022, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta also admitted in remarks at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s 65th Anniversary that the end of Roe v. Wade dialed up “the urgency” of the DOJ’s work, including the “enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.”

The DOJ has also specifically used a KKK-era law called “conspiracy against rights” with the aim of increasing prison time for pro-life activists accused of violating the FACE Act.

Merrick Garland admitted in March of 2023 that the DOJ has prosecuted more pro-life activists than pro-abortion activists following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision but blamed the timing of alleged crimes for the discrepancy.

“I will say, you are quite right: there are many more prosecutions with respect to blocking of the abortion centers. But that is generally because those actions are taken with photography at the time, during the daylight, and seeing the person who did it is quite easy,” Garland told Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. He went on:

Those who are attacking the pregnancy resource centers, which is a horrid thing to do, are doing this at night, in the dark. We have put full resources on this. We have put rewards out for this. The Justice Department and the FBI have made outreach to Catholic and other organizations to ask for their help in identifying the people who are doing this.

Following several cases against pro-life activists, Rep. Roy and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced legislation that would repeal the FACE Act. The lawmakers have accused Biden’s DOJ of weaponizing the law to go after political opponents.

“Free Americans should never live in fear of their government targeting them because of their beliefs. Yet, Biden’s Department of Justice has brazenly weaponized the FACE Act against normal, everyday Americans across the political spectrum, simply because they are pro-life,” Roy said in a statement in September of 2023. “Our Constitution separates power between the federal government and the states for a reason, and we ignore that safeguard at our own peril. The FACE Act is an unconstitutional federal takeover of state police powers; it must be repealed.”

Former President Donald Trump also pledged — in 2023 and again in 2024 — to create a task force to review and potentially pardon or commute the sentences of every “political prisoner who’s been unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration” if he is elected.