FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has historically focused more on “abortion-related violent extremism” than targeting pro-lifers under the unconstitutional Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.
“When it comes to FACE Act enforcement and abortion-related violent extremism, I think one of the things that gets lost — and I appreciate the opportunity to clarify — is that really, since the Dobbs decision, actually more of our abortion-related violent extremism investigations have focused on violence against pro-life facilities, as opposed to other way around,” Wray claimed.
As Republican Rep. Chip Roy quickly noted, nothing could be further from the truth.
“We’re still waiting on responses on letters that we’ve sent indicating data to the contrary,” Roy said. “There’s been a significant amount of efforts in targeting of people who are pro-lifers, who go to clinics, and that they’ve been prosecuted.”
Contrary to Wray’s claims, only five of the 60 cases brought under Biden’s watch focused on pro-abortion extremists. The other 55 targeted people who value life in the womb for praying, singing, and evangelizing at abortion facilities across the U.S.
As of President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, the federal government had brought fewer than 100 FACE Act prosecutions since the law’s inception in 1994. That amounts to fewer than four targetings a year under an act that, as Roy noted in a 2023 letter, “had never been used to indict individuals related to an attack on a pro-life pregnancy center or house of worship.”
The scarcity of FACE Act prosecutions quickly changed, however, during Biden’s House tenure. Following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision, the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice became responsible for nearly a quarter of all FACE Act prosecutions. Despite at least 90 abortion-fueled firebombings, vandalism, and other attacks on lifesaving pregnancy centers, pro-life organizations, and churches in the wake of the leaked Dobbs v. Jackson opinion, the FBI and DOJ focused most of their time and resources on jailing pro-lifers.
One such case involved the arrest of 75-year-old Paulette Harlow, a woman with a “debilitating medical condition” who was charged and found guilty of a civil rights conspiracy and violating the FACE Act for praying at a Washington D.C. abortion facility.
“Do you think it is appropriate for a 75-year-old woman who is praying at a clinic in DC to be put in prison for two years for that activity? Just a simple question. Do you think that’s appropriate?” Roy asked Wray.
Wray claimed he was “not familiar with this specific case.”
The FBI director’s attempts to brush off the administration’s apparent animosity for people who believe in the sanctity of life further prove Americans are right not to trust the nation’s premier law enforcement agency or its DOJ partner.
“The FACE Act has been weaponized against harmless pro-life senior citizens, while arson and violence against churches and pregnancy centers is ignored,” Republican Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said in a statement responding to Wray’s claim.
