A judge found anti-abortion activists guilty of illegally blocking access to an on-campus abortion clinic Tuesday.
A judge convicted five members of the anti-abortion group Progressive Anti-Abortion Tuesday for violating the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act – which outlaws interfering with people seeking abortions – when they blockaded the Washington Surgi-Clinic on 2112 F Street N.W. in an October 2020 protest, according to the Washington Post. Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the U.S. District judge who oversaw the case, ordered the five defendants to be jailed until their sentencing later this year, with four co-defendants also involved in the protest standing trial next week.
Lauren Handy, one of the defendants and the leader of the anti-abortion advocacy group Progressive Anti-Abortion, made national news when Metropolitan Police Department officers discovered five fetuses in her D.C. home on the day prosecutors announced her federal indictment in March 2022, all of which were aborted “in accordance with D.C. law,” according to MPD. Authorities have not charged Handy for keeping the fetuses in her home.
In October, Handy and the eight other protesters used chains, bike locks and ropes to close entrances into the Foggy Bottom abortion clinic and the back of the clinic where officials would perform abortions before MPD officers cleared the scene. One patient was forced to climb through a receptionist window to go to the back of the clinic to have an abortion, according to security camera footage.
The defendants face up to 11 years in prison and up to $350,000 in fines, according to the Washington Post.
“They planned their crime carefully, to take over that clinic, block access to reproductive services and interfere with others’ rights,” John Crabb, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, said in his closing arguments last week. “The idea of deliberately breaking the law, to them, was sexy.”