This is the seventh article in our series on the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and its self-destruction over time.
In recent days, the FBI has concentrated its mammoth manpower on investigating and prosecuting those who came to Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 to support honest elections. Also, the FBI has long targeted gun owners, Constitutionalists, and various others perceived to be “Enemies of the State.” What has been overlooked is that one of the FBI’s targets has been those in the pro-life movement. Let’s review some of the special attention the FBI has devoted to pro-lifers.
In August 2010, the FBI and the Department of Justice co-sponsored a training seminar with national abortion organizations including Planned Parenthood, the Feminist Majority Foundation and the National Abortion Federation. The FBI training defined as “violence” various common pro-life “activities such as praying, providing women outside abortion centers with alternatives information, and peaceful protesting or picketing.” Imagine FBI agents being trained to spot those praying on street corners as especially deserving of investigation and prosecution.
In March 2022, FBI agents raided and arrested nine pro-life advocates on charges of blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic almost a year and a half previously — in October of 2020. Some of the pro-lifers were rounded up in FBI raids of their homes and places of work. Some were arrested in FBI raids on their homes in the dark of night, as video now shows. The pro-lifers were charged with violations of the “Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act” (“FACE Act”), which carries potential prison sentences of 11 years.
Let’s pause to consider whether that aggressive enforcement has been even-handed. After the leak of Justice Alito’s draft Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade, the nation suffered more than 50 attacks against churches, pro-life pregnancy centers, and other pro-life groups. The FBI refused to respond for weeks.
On June 16, 2022, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, demanding that he investigate pro-abortion extremist group “Jane’s Revenge” for domestic terrorism after the group took responsibility for some of the attacks “including firebombings and grotesque acts of vandalism.” Cotton wrote to Garland that “[i]f you are unwilling to protect Americans from these attacks, you should resign.” Yet three months later, not a single arrest has been reported in the attacks on pro-life institutions. Meanwhile, according to a report by the Catholic New Agency, the number of attacks on pro-life institutions has ballooned to nearly 100.
Most recently, on September 23, 2022, dozens of armed FBI agents with drawn guns executed an early-morning raid on the Pennsylvania home of Catholic pro-life advocate Mark Houck, arresting him at gunpoint in front of his seven children. The FBI accuses Houck of violating the FACE Act, based on Houck’s involvement in a peaceful protest in October 2021. Apparently, a pro-abortion escort said crude and disgusting things to Houck’s minor son. Houck defended his son and months later, the FBI raided his home and executed a SWAT-style arrest. Even Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Soros-backed prosecutor, declined to press charges against Houck.
The FBI appears to have little to no time to investigate the Hunter Biden laptop, or the claims of former Biden family business partner Tony Bobulinski, but found time to raid the home of a peaceful, law-abiding, pro-lifer. This kind of FBI behavior is no accident — it is designed to send a warning to other pro-life advocates and sidewalk counselors not to use their First Amendment rights to persuade pregnant women not to have abortions.
Many have now realized that the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency long ago declared war on pro-lifers and their free-speech rights. As the FBI targets champions for life in our nation, and ignores crimes by its crony politicians, more and more people are concluding that the FBI is not an institution in need of reform — it is one needing to be abolished.
Editor’s Note: To read the articles in this series thus far, please click here.
