A year-old complaint by an abortion-clinic escort who says he was shoved by a pro-life counselor, one that was dismissed by a lower court, has become a red-meat case for Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI.
The Catholic pro-life counselor, Mark Houck, 48, the co-founder and president of The King’s Men, was arrested Friday at his rural Pennsylvania home and charged with physically assaulting a Planned Parenthood clinic escort.
It was one of those terrifying raids with 15 vehicles and some 25 FBI agents – which we’ve all noticed are on the increase as Joe Biden gets serious about protecting abortion since the demise of Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court.
Rather than honoring the earlier dismissal, U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero announced that Houck was charged with violation of the dreaded Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Did you think the U.S. was out of the abortion business just because of a Supreme Court case? Think again.
This time Houck faces 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $350,000. Can anyone say double jeopardy? Not Romero. Uh-uh.
“Assault is always a serious offense, and under the FACE Act, if the victim is targeted because of their association with a reproductive healthcare clinic, it is a federal crime,” Romero said. “Our Office and the Department of Justice are committed to prosecuting crimes which threaten the safety and rights of all individuals.”
“Put simply, violence is never the answer,” chimed in Jacqueline Maguire, who is special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia Division. “Violating the FACE Act by committing a physical assault is a serious crime for which the FBI will work to hold offenders accountable.”
Now just so you know what the FBI under Biden considers violence, here’s what the District Court in Philadelphia threw out.
Houck’s wife explains that her husband drove two hour every Wednesday to speak outside of abortion clinics for six to eight hours. Sometimes he would take his eldest, a 12-year-old son. Her husband had shoved the escort because, for “weeks and weeks” this man would speak to his son saying “crude … inappropriate and disgusting things,” such as “your dad’s a fag.” He began approaching the child, and Houck shoved him; the guy back. His boo-boo required a Band-Aid. I think the lower court handled it about right.
Now you know why Democrats compare the Capitol “insurrection” to Pearl Harbor and 911. No police died of injuries. Two protesters died on the scene – one by police gunshot and another being beaten to death by police – both women. Prisoners are still awaiting their constitutional “speedy” trials in Washington cages – over a year later.
You get the picture.
It reminds me of when I commenced work as the editor at the Sacramento Union. I heard these horror stories of what was happening to men and women protesting abortion at clinics. It was 1991, and I decided I would visit a clinic one Saturday.
I arrived to see the peaceful protesters were kept at bay. But they faced angry crowds of pro-abortion demonstrators that would charge into them and then call the police. On my first and only day observing, it got dicey. I was attacked by a large woman who did something odd. She started punching me in the face and yelling, at the same time, “Let me go. Let me go.”
“That’s the way they defend against attacks they launched,” I was told.
“Oh,” I said.
And then they told me: “Don’t worry. We have video cams for just such attacks.”
I saw the footage, and it looked pretty good. I would press charges with the DA. Surely, as the new editor in town, they would go through with a prosecution.
They did. But the assistant DA was no match for a Sacramento jury and her defense attorneys – whom the woman who assaulted me apparently worked for.
It was the firm associated with the late Charles R. Garry, a legendary civil rights attorney who represented a number of high-profile clients in leftist political cases during the 1960s and 1970s, including Huey P. Newton during his 1968 capital murder trial and the Peoples Temple during the 1978 Jonestown tragedy. They sent several lawyers to my case.
It was a slaughter – for me and my DA.
When she won the case, the woman sued me and the newspaper. The paper usually decides how to handle it, so they settled. I don’t know how much it was.
That experience in California so long ago showed that, even then, the system was stacked in favor of all leftist causes and against righteous ones – including the innocent, and I mean INNOCENT, victims of abortion.
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