DOJ Charges 11 Pro-Life Activists For Blocking Abortion Clinic, Threatens Massive Prison Sentences

The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged 11 pro-life activists with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act related to blocking access to an abortion clinic in 2021, according to a Wednesday press release.

The individuals are charged with conspiring to prevent the clinic from providing abortion services and blocking patients from undergoing abortions, with seven facing up to 11 years in prison and $350,000 in fines and the remaining five facing a year in prison and fines up to $10,000. The FACE Act makes it a federal crime to interfere with someone “because that person is a provider of reproductive health care.”

Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Calvin Zastrow, Coleman Boyd, Caroline Davis, Paul Vaughn, Dennis Green, Eva Edl, Eva Zastrow, James Zastrow and Paul Place were indicted on federal offenses related to the FACE Act, according to the Department of Justice. Gallagher, Idoni, Calvin Zastrow, Boyd, Davis, Vaughn and Dennis Green were charged with a civil rights conspiracy carrying harsher penalties.

Chester Gallagher allegedly promoted several pro-life events on social media, and other defendants coordinated travel and logistics on Facebook related to the March 4-7, 2021 events, according to the indictment. Coleman Boyd livestreamed a blockade of an abortion clinic entrance March 5, broadcasting the defendants blocking entrances, preventing an employee and a patient from entering and saying the patient was a “mom coming to kill her baby.”

The 11 defendants are accused of aiding and abetting and using physical force to injure, intimidate and interfere with employees of the clinic and a patient who was seeking reproductive health services, though the injuries are not specified and a friend of the activists recently told the Daily Signal the protest was peaceful. They are all charged with violating the FACE Act by using physical obstruction to intimidate and interfere with the clinic’s employees.

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