Bill to repeal FACE Act after Biden ‘weaponization’ clears House committee

The House Judiciary Committee passed legislation Tuesday to repeal the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law wielded by the Biden administration to prosecute more than 30 pro-life activists, in some cases sending them to jail.

The panel voted 13-10 to advance H.R. 589, the bill introduced by Rep. Chip Roy, Texas Republican, after a surge in the number of prosecutions under the FACE Act, which criminalizes protests that obstruct access to abortion clinics as well as pro-life pregnancy centers.

Even so, Mr. Roy said 92% of the FACE Act prosecutions from 2021 to 2024 were brought against pro-life activists protesting at abortion clinics. Just 8% of cases targeted pro-choice agitators, despite nearly 100 attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and offices after May 2022.

The Biden administration was also responsible for 24% of all prosecutions in the federal law’s 30-year history, he said.

“The previous administration weaponized the FACE Act to prosecute nonviolent pro-life Americans with the harshest sentences,” said Mr. Roy.

Rep. Bob Onder, Missouri Republican, said that since 1994, “97% of FACE Act prosecutions have been against pro-lifers.”

“It is time to end the weaponization of the FACE Act against peaceful, First Amendment protected speech,” he said.

Disagreeing were House Democrats, including Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, who accused Republicans of siding with “terrorists.”

“My Republican colleagues do not trust women. That’s what this is entirely about,” he said. “The only people in America who are asking for this legislation to be repealed are terrorists, people who would choose to show up and terrorize women as they make a very personal and intimate decision that nobody else should be a part of.”

The bill could pass the Republican-controlled House, but would face a steep climb in the Senate, where Republicans would need 60 votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Their majority is only 53-47.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, New York Democrat, said the real agenda was to reduce abortions by allowing mayhem at abortion clinics.

“Let’s be clear about exactly what’s going on here. Republicans hope that an increase in violence at reproductive health clinics will discourage women from accessing essential health care,” he said.

Those prosecuted under the Biden administration include 89-year-old Eva Edl, a wheelchair-bound Soviet concentration camp survivor found guilty of blocking access to a Michigan abortion clinic in 2020.

Pro-life advocates cheered the committee vote, calling the law an unconstitutional infringement on their free-speech rights.

“Since it was signed into law in 1994, the FACE Act was always intended as a cudgel against pro-life speech,” said Peter Breen, Thomas More Society executive director and head of litigation.

“Our clients — loving moms and dads, grandparents, priests, and nonviolent people of faith – have faced harsher charges and sentences than convicted drug dealers and fraudsters,” he said.