Crisis Pregnancy Centers and the FACE Act: An emerging area of political violence prosecution
Caroline Hecht
What is the purpose of the FACE Act? The law, which stands for the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, was passed in 1994 amid a spike in violence at anti-abortion protests. In two instances, protestors blocking exits from clinics shot doctors, killing one. The law, in effect, criminalizes certain protest actions, making what was once legal, illegal with the goal of protecting patients and providers of abortion. Throughout 2023, the law was used to charge five pro-choice activists for the vandalism of crisis pregnancy centers–anti-abortion facilities that offer few medical services beyond pregnancy tests. This application is facially bizarre, runs counter to the stated aims of the legislators who wrote and passed the law, and represents a further post-Dobbs erosion of the understanding of abortion as a right.
The text of the FACE Act defines its application as follows, whoever:
- by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services;
- by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship; or
- intentionally damages or destroys the property of a facility, or attempts to do so, because such facility provides reproductive health services, or intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship,
The law deals with two distinct protected acts: reproductive health services and the exercise of religious freedom. The religious freedom provision was added by Senator Orrin Hatch in an attempt to complicate passage of the bill, which failed as its proponents were willing to incorporate the rider.
The FACE Act came about in an environment of rising anti-choice violent extremism, including two key incidents in 1993. On August 19th, George R. Tiller, a doctor at Women’s Health Care Services in Wichita, Kansas, was shot multiple times while backing his car out of the clinic driveway. His attacker was a woman who, according to police, had been passing out anti-abortion literature earlier in the day. Tiller survived that attempt on his life, although he would later be murdered in the lobby of his church by an anti-abortion extremist. On March 10th, 1993, Dr. David Gunn was shot and killed outside of the Pensacola, Florida clinic where he worked. The assailant had been part of a group of anti-abortion protestors gathered to “pray for [Dr. Gunn’s] soul.” It was in this context that the FACE Act was written.
The law passed easily by voice vote in the House and was reconciled with a similar bill in the Senate (at which point the religious freedom language was added.) Then-Congressman Chuck Schumer said of the law, “It says to [anti-abortion group] Operation Rescue and others that you’re going to pay a price for your actions,” making reference to an anti-abortion group. President Clinton, after signing it into law, said, “We simply cannot — we must not — continue to allow the attacks, the incidents of arson, the campaigns of intimidation upon law-abiding citizens that has given rise to this law.”
tPP data shows that anti-abortion political violence cases rose throughout the early 90s, in the immediate leadup to the passage of the FACE Act.
Thirty years after the FACE Act’s passage, the US has regressed on abortion access. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, abortion is illegal in 14 states and materially difficult to access in 10 more. The 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has led to a renewed wave of activism focused on protecting the right to abortion. The FACE Act arose out of a need to protect patients and providers of abortion, and was used to prosecute those who interfered with access to abortion. Now, in the context of increasingly limited access to abortion, the FACE Act is newly being applied to pro-choice protestors.
In two cases (one with four co-offenders), prosecutors in Florida’s Middle District and Ohio’s Northern District have decided to make the case that vandalism of crisis pregnancy centers interferes with “obtaining or providing reproductive health services,” as the FACE Act stipulates. The law fails to use the word abortion, which has made room for its application to crisis pregnancy centers. It’s important to note that these kinds of facilities are explicitly anti-abortion and use names like “pregnancy resource center” to obscure the fact that they do not offer abortion. Facilities such as these will typically provide a pregnancy test or potentially an ultrasound and anti-abortion literature. They frequently traffic in medical disinformation, like offering services to “reverse an abortion pill” or providing information on “post-abortion syndrome.”
The first case surrounds events on March 22, 2023, when four individuals spray painted phrases such as, “If abortions aren’t safe than niether [sic] are you,” “YOUR TIME IS UP!!,” “WE’RE COMING for U,” and “We are everywhere” on the building of Heartbeat of Miami, a crisis pregnancy center. The defendants are also being sued civilly by the Florida Attorney General, on FACE Act and RICO charges. The second case stems from an incident on April 15, 2023, when a Bowling Green State University student spray painted messages including “Jane’s Revenge,” “abort God,” “fake clinic,” “liars,” and “fund abortion” on the HerChoice pregnancy care center in Bowling Green, Ohio.
Using the FACE Act to prosecute vandalism crimes is unusual in and of itself, but its application in this case is a tacit endorsement of crisis pregnancy centers as providers of reproductive health services. This shift has worried experts. Haley McMahon, an abortion and criminalization researcher at Emory University told The Intercept, “The level of bothsideism here by the DOJ goes beyond absurdity,” noting that the Department of Justice is “setting an incredibly irresponsible precedent for recognizing [crisis pregnancy centers] as medical facilities that provide reproductive health services.”
tPP data shows that arson makes up the plurality of abortion-related political violence cases, as contrasted to the criminal method, vandalism, in these cases.
In addition to prosecutors, the Department of Justice (DOJ) seemingly cosigns this new application of the law. The DOJ’s official webpage about the FACE Act contains the following language:
“The FACE Act is not about abortions. The statute protects all patients, providers, and facilities that provide reproductive health services, including pro-life pregnancy counseling services and any other pregnancy support facility providing reproductive health care.”
According to Internet Archive data, these sentences were added sometime between August 16 and September 21, 2022, just a couple of months after Dobbs. (DOJ did not respond to tPP’s request for comment on the reasoning behind the change). This change is hard to make sense of, particularly from an administration that will be campaigning on abortion rights this fall. Knowing the realities of the services provided at crisis pregnancy centers, why cede the framing to their interests, characterizing them as benign “pro-life counseling” providers? If vandalism of crisis pregnancy centers is a problem in need of addressing, why do revisionist history on the FACE Act instead of passing a new law? Prosecutors at the state and federal level are quietly widening the scope of a bill designed to protect access to abortion in order to further criminalize those who protest to protect it.
References
“After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State.” Center for Reproductive Rights, n.d. https://reproductiverights.org/maps/abortion-laws-by-state/.
Booth, William. “Doctor Killed During Abortion Protest.” The Washington Post, March 11, 1993. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/abortviolence/stories/gunn.htm.
Civil Rights Division U.S. Department of Justice. “Protecting Patients and Health Care Providers.” May 22, 2023. https://www.justice.gov/crt/protecting-patients-and-health-care-providers.
“Crossroads Women’s Center,” n.d. https://crossroadswomenscenter.com/pregnancy-options/abortion/abortion-pill-reversal.
Faison, Seth. “Abortion Doctor Wounded Outside Kansas Clinic.” The New York Times, August 20, 1993. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/20/us/abortion-doctor-wounded-outside-kansas-clinic.html.
Freedom of access to clinic entrances, 18 U.S. Code § 248 § (n.d.). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/248.
“Heartbeat of Miami,” n.d. https://heartbeatofmiami.org/resources/forgiven-and-set-free/.
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Lennard, Natasha. “Abortion Rights Activists Face Attack From DeSantis and Conspiracy Lawsuit — for Spray Painting.” The Intercept, May 18, 2023. https://theintercept.com/2023/05/18/abortion-conspiracy-lawsuit-florida/.
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Office of Public Affairs U.S. Department of Justice. “Two Additional Defendants Charged with Civil Rights Conspiracy Targeting Pregnancy Resource Centers.” March 29, 2023. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-additional-defendants-charged-civil-rights-conspiracy-targeting-pregnancy-resource.
Planned Parenthood. “What Are Crisis Pregnancy Centers?,” November 4, 2021. https://www.plannedparenthood.org/blog/what-are-crisis-pregnancy-centers.
Sierra Sun Times. “U.S. Senator Mike Lee and Representative Chip Roy Team Up to Repeal the FACE Act – The FACE Act Is a Federal Law Designed to Protect Access to Abortion Facilities.” October 5, 2023. https://www.hydesmith.senate.gov/us-senator-mike-lee-and-representative-chip-roy-team-repeal-face-act-face-act-federal-law-designed.
Washington Examiner. “Biden DOJ’s Continued Abuse of the FACE Act.” February 5, 2024. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2834243/bidens-face-act-persecution-of-pro-life-movement/.
Whelan, Ed. “FACE Act and Places of Religious Worship.” National Review, February 7, 2023. https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/face-act-and-places-of-religious-worship/.