The FACE Act Is Unconstitutional. It’s Past Time Congress Got Rid Of It

[GURPS]

Just this year, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, has announced indictments of 22 peaceful pro-life protesters, trumping up bogus charges based on the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. At best, that law creates duplicative protections against crimes that are already prosecutable under state and local criminal statutes. At worst, it is a weapon for federal law enforcement to unconstitutionally brandish against its political dissidents.

Right now, it has become the latter. It’s past time for Congress to repeal the FACE Act and do away with the reckless, state-sponsored terrorizing of innocent Americans that the law enables.

Denial of First and 14th Amendment Rights​

While the FACE Act has teed up left-wing bureaucrats to target pro-lifers, the DOJ has denied equal protection of the laws to pro-life pregnancy clinics, in violation of the 14th Amendment. By refusing to apply the law to protect pregnancy centers (as well as churches) from dozens of instances of arson, vandalism, and threats, the federal government has violated Americans’ 14th Amendment rights in its application of the FACE Act.

The application of the FACE Act has also targeted Americans for their peaceful assembly and speech, two of the most foundational freedoms protected by the First Amendment. Recently, the DOJ indicted 11 peaceful protesters who lined the hallway of a building outside the door of an abortionist’s office to pray, sing, and petition.

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Some courts have argued that the FACE Act applies to actions in the third category. As the Seventh Circuit coldly put it, “Congress found that obstructing access to abortion clinics decreases the number of abortions performed and therefore negatively impacts interstate commerce.”



Well as similar claim could be made of those firebombing Pregnancy Crisis Centers ... as such a firebomb clinic results in a decline of the work done by such a center

It's Past Time Congress Got Rid Of The Unconstitutional FACE Act

Both in its application and on its face, the FACE Act is an abuse of power by bureaucrats increasingly hostile to political dissidents.

thefederalist.com

 

[vraiblonde]

It’s worth noting that the phrase “reproductive health services” does not single out abortion facilities, but legally includes pro-life pregnancy centers. The DOJ, however, has yet to announce a single indictment for the dozens of attacks on pregnancy centers that followed the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

THIS is the problem. Not the law, but the selective enforcement of it. I feel like people should be able to go to a medical facility without having to run the gauntlet of crazy protesters screaming at them. If you feel the need to scream at strangers just because you don't agree with their decisions (that have nothing to do with you), YOU are the bad guy, not them.

 

[GURPS]

THIS is the problem. Not the law, but the selective enforcement of it.

Ah huh ONLY protesting outside of Abortion Clinics is criminalized

 

[Kyle]

... without having to run the gauntlet of crazy protesters screaming at them.

That^

In ANY situation.

Also, we need an additional entry.... If you block a highway, drivers are entitled to run you over.

 

[Hijinx]

I like that idea. It's BS that idiots can block a street and nothing is done about it.

 

[GURPS]

Reproductive Rights Activists Charged Under Law Intended to Protect Abortion Clinics​

Now this law, introduced in response to very real threats and deadly violence against abortion providers, is being used to prosecute two reproductive rights activists, who allegedly spray-painted the outside walls of misleading and dangerous “crisis pregnancy centers” — known as CPCs — in Florida. Freestone, 27, and Smith-Stewart, 23, face up to 12 years in prison for graffiti, which the Justice Department is calling a threat to “reproductive health services facilities.”

It is both a grim application of one of the few federal laws that has served imperiled abortion clinics and a gross misuse of the term “reproductive health services” to describe what the facilities in question provide.

“This is yet another example of the government disproportionately charging alleged activists with serious crimes in an attempt to deter political opposition to the fall of Roe post Dobbs,” Lauren Regan, the director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center and attorney for defendant Smith-Stewart, told me. “Tagging private property might be a violation, but it should not be a federal crime.”