One system. Two sets of rules.
Eco-terrorists have attacked priceless works of art and history. Hamas supporters have blocked roads, bridges, and airports. They’ve shut down campuses and assaulted students and faculty.
And all of it has gone unpunished.
But one woman is going to prison for almost 5 years for protesting abortion.
federal judge sentenced the leader of an anti-abortion group to more than four years in prison Tuesday for orchestrating a conspiracy to violate patients’ rights by forcibly blockading a D.C. clinic in 2020.
Lauren Handy, 30, and nine co-defendants were indicted on felony charges of conspiracy against rights and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for forcing their way into the Washington Surgi-Clinic on F Street under a false name and then using chains, bike locks, furniture and their bodies to prevent patients from entering the facility and police from removing them.
So exactly what Hamas supporters are doing all over the country. Except they had the wrong politics and they did it at a place where civil disobedience is not allowed.
Now personally I oppose violent protests, vandalism and generally interfering with and blocking people. It’s a measure to only take in extreme cases when you’re willing to go to jail for your beliefs.
That said, we cannot have a system in which some people protesting go to jail for 4 years and 9 months while others get a desk appearance ticket.
Nor can leftists insist that campus riots can’t be stopped because of free speech but that abortion protests should lead to 5 years in prison.
FACE is very blatantly unconstitutional because it criminalizes some forms of protest for purely political reasons. But it’s also the way that FACE has been enforced. The FBI has made only two arrests (that I’m aware of) for the nationwide rash of attacks on pregnancy centers by pro-abortion activists.
Either way, allowing nationwide riots by leftists for years while criminalizing a largely conservative form of protest activity with years in prison for non-violent protests is a mockery of the First Amendment. It has to go.