Six pro-life advocates were convicted of federal felonies on Tuesday for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act during a 2021 peaceful protest at an abortion facility just outside Nashville, Tennessee, a clinic that has since been forced to stop providing abortions.
A jury delivered its guilty verdict late Tuesday for six pro-lifers who participated in a March 2021 “rescue” at the Carafem Health Center Clinic in Mt. Joliet, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. The verdict comes in spite of the fact that, just a year and a half later, the same facility was forced to stop committing abortions to comply with Tennessee’s pro-life legislation after the June 2022 overthrow of Roe v. Wade.
The pro-life advocates who were convicted Tuesday are Chester Gallagher of Lebanon, Tennessee; Heather Idoni and Calvin Zastrow of Michigan; Coleman Boyd of Bolton, Mississippi, and Dennis Green of Cumberland, Virginia.
Paul Vaughn of Centerville, Tennessee, the Christian husband and father of 11 who was arrested at gunpoint at his family home in 2022, was also convicted.
Each of the protesters involved in the Tennessee rescue now faces as many as 10 1/2 years behind bars and up to $260,000 in fines.
Sentencing is slated to take place July 2.
The convictions come after a federal grand jury in Nashville brought the indictments against the 11 pro-lifers in October 2022, including the six convicted Tuesday, alleging that they “aided and abetted by one another, used force and physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, and interfere with employees of the clinic and a patient who was seeking reproductive health services [abortions].” Concentration camp survivor Eva Edl, then 87, was among those charged, LifeSite reported at the time.
Despite the convictions, the rescue in question was markedly peaceful. Participants stood inside the building, sang hymns, and some sat in front of doors to prevent entry and exit.
A recording from the planned protest, made public by pro-life organization Live Action, shows pro-lifers standing and sitting inside a hallway of the building, singing hymns, praying, and refusing to leave. Some of the pro-lifers sat in front of doors in a passive effort to prevent employees and patients from proceeding with abortions. On one occasion, the protesters attempted to engage an apparently abortion-seeking woman in conversation about the preciousness of her preborn baby.
Imagine civil rights protesters going to jail for 10 years.
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