A Tennessee woman has been sentenced to more than three years behind bars for blocking the entrance to a Planned Parenthood center in Manhattan where women were going to obtain abortions.
33-year-old Bevelyn Beatty Williams was sentenced on federal charges of conspiracy to violate the Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances (FACE) Act and violating it via “force, threats of force, and physical obstruction, resulting in bodily harm.”
The pro-life advocate was hit with the charges in December 2022 after working with a friend to stop women from aborting babies in multiple states, including New York, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida.
The “bodily harm” charge relates to an incident at a Planned Parenthood abortion center in Manhattan in which a staff member opened the door from the outside to allow a woman to enter. When this happened, Williams refused to move aside and used her body weight to keep the door closed while the staff member continued trying to push it open so the woman could go inside.
The Planned Parenthood staff member claims that Williams crushed her hand, but Williams insists that it was an accidental injury and is therefore not covered by the FACE Act. Moreover, Williams contends that the staff member violated a no engagement policy by recording her and talking to her while she protested outside of Planned Parenthood.
After a nine-day trial, Williams was convicted on one count of violating the FACE Act by District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon, who was appointed by President Biden. In sentencing this week, the same judge handed down a 41-month sentence followed by two years of supervised release.
Williams said that she was suffering from trauma over an abortion that she obtained when she was 15 years old and asked for leniency, but Rochon told her: “You cannot commit crimes, even in the name of a religious cause.”
Williams converted to Christianity during a previous jail sentence and now devotes her time to highlighting how abortion disproportionately damages the black community. This is a message that pro-life advocates have been trying to convey for many years. The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a eugenicist who said her goal was to “assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit.”
Biden administration is going out of its way to throw the book at pro-life activists
In May, 75-year-old Paulette Harlow was sentenced to 24 months in jail following a conviction for taking part in a pro-life blockade of an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C. in 2020. The Massachusetts woman was one of several people who took part in the blockade that ended up serving time in prison over the protests, during which some of them were recorded sitting inside the clinic singing hymns and praying the rosary.
The FACE Act has been used by the Biden administration to target people protecting babies from being murdered in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Former U.S. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said that the “devastating” overturning gave a new sense of “urgency” to the Department of Justice’s efforts in this regard.
It is clear where the Biden administration's priorities are. As they relentlessly pursue pro-life advocates and charge them with FACE Act violations, there have been more than 400 attacks on Catholic churches in America, many of which contained pro-abortion graffiti, but none of the incidents have resulted in federal prosecutions despite the fact that attacking places of worship is considered a federal crime.
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