The FBI’s recent flurry of activity against pro-life activists follows a little-noticed action by the Justice Department in July, creating a task force to defend abortion.
The DOJ’s Reproductive Rights Task Force was announced on July 12 with the stated goal of “protect[ing] access to reproductive health care,” which means abortion.
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, a former ACLU lawyer, heads the task force, which, according to the DOJ, includes representatives of the “Department’s Civil Division, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Attorney community, Office of the Solicitor General,” and other offices at the DOJ. Justice also assigned dedicated staff to this task force.
Along with lobbying Congress to create a federal right to abortion, the task force’s work included centralizing “information about the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act,” the federal law used to prosecute at least a dozen pro-life activists in recent weeks.
Mark Houck was arrested in September for a 2021 scuffle with a pro-abortion activist in Philadelphia. The activist had brought charges against Houck in state and municipal court in 2021, but those charges were reportedly dropped.
A week later, the FBI arrested 11 pro-lifers, including an 87-year-old lady, for their protests at an abortion clinic.
In between, FBI agents reportedly questioned pro-lifers who were offering sidewalk counseling outside a Planned Parenthood.
Where was this flurry of activity coming from? A good guess is the DOJ’s Reproductive Rights Task Force. The FBI refused to answer whether the DOJ’s Reproductive Rights Task Force had anything to do with the arrests, deflecting the question to the DOJ. The DOJ didn’t respond to a press request made Wednesday.
Oddly, the DOJ’s creation of this task force garnered almost no media attention, despite a press release from the department, forwarded by the White House that evening. This announcement came the same day President Joe Biden gave a speech on gun violence and also released images from the TK telescope got near-zero press coverage. (I couldn’t find mention of its creation in July in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Associated Press.)
Gupta’s work at the ACLU was focused on “criminal justice reform,” but now, she heads a task force that appears to be behind slapping federal felonies on year-old misdemeanor cases and dropped charges.
* Article from: The Washington Examiner
