If Peacefully Protesting Abortion Is Criminal But Firebombing Pregnancy Centers Is Not, There Is No Rule Of Law

by Jordan Boyd

Less than one month after armed FBI agents handcuffed and dragged Mark Houck, a pro-life activist and father, out of his home in front of his wife and children, the FBI raided another pro-life activist for his involvement in a peaceful protest outside a Tennessee abortion facility.
 
FBI agents, with weapons drawn, swarmed Chet Gallagher’s home on Tuesday night, LifeNews.com reported, for allegedly violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law designed to keep people concerned with protecting unborn life away from abortion facilities. Gallagher was not home at the time of the raid so the FBI “demanded his whereabouts from Gallagher’s family” and his neighbors.
 
Gallagher is one of 11 activists devoted to defending unborn life who were federally indicted by the Department of Justice this week for allegedly violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act by standing in a hallway outside the Carafem abortion facility in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, in March 2021. Gallagher and six others were also charged with civil rights conspiracy.
 
You wouldn’t know it from the DOJ’s press release, which claims the 11 individuals “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,” but the Christian pro-lifers spent most of their time peacefully praying, singing, and crying in the hallway leading to the abortion facility. Footage of the gathering eventually shows local police escorting several handcuffed members of the group out of the building and into a police van.
 

 
Compare this footage to pictures and videos of pro-abortion vandals’ damage to dozens of life-saving pregnancy centers and churches. A mysterious anarchist-connected group called Jane’s Revenge took responsibility for some of these attacks and threatened to “adopt increasingly extreme tactics to maintain freedom over our own bodies.”
 
Yet, it took more than a month and a half after the Dobbs v. Jackson decision leak and days after it refused to comment on the vandalism and destruction for the FBI to tell The Federalist that it would investigate the attacks. Now, nearly six months later, the FBI and DOJ have yet to publicize any indictments for the criminals who wreaked havoc on the institutions providing life-saving services to women and children in need.
 
That’s no accident. Attorney General Merrick Garland likes to pretend that the rule of law grants no exceptions, but Americans know that’s not the case.
 
The same corrupt DOJ that is targeting men, women, and children mourning the deaths of unborn babies dropped nearly half of its cases against the rioters who ravaged Portland for 100 consecutive days during the 2020 summer of rage. The DOJ wants you to somehow believe that standing in a hallway is worse than the violence that shook cities such as Minneapolis, Portland, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, to their core.

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