The Face of Authoritarianism
The Trump regime is using a 1994 law intended to protect women’s access to reproductive health against journalists.
Last week, former CNN anchor Don Lemon and independent Minnesota journalist Georgia Fort, were arrested by federal agents for covering anti-ICE protests at a St. Paul, Minn., church. A federal grand jury indicted them on charges related to the interruption of a religious service. Among the laws the Justice Department officials claim they broke? The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.
The FACE Act is a 1994 law intended to impose federal penalties on protesters who threaten, obstruct, or cause injury to people attempting to access reproductive health clinics. Another provision in the law prohibits the same at places of religious worship. Its bipartisan passage reflected a hard-won victory for the abortion rights movement, particularly after a spike in clinic violence in the 1980s culminated with the 1993 murder of Dr. David Gunn. For three decades, the law was an important tool for protecting clinics, providers, and patients from violence and harassment.
Early in the Trump administration, the Department of Justice announced it would no longer enforce FACE and dropped pending cases. At the same time, President Donald Trump pardoned 23 people convicted of violating FACE, some of whom were freed mid-prison sentence and had been convicted of physically blocking patients from accessing clinics, breaking into facilities, and/or stealing fetal tissue.
Obviously, the implications for press freedom are a major headline; never fear, we will return to the heinous nature of that threat. But this is simultaneously a moment to revisit the Trump administration’s overt antiabortion agenda — no matter how much the president wants the vast majority of the electorate who support abortion rights to think otherwise.
Ever since the Dobbs decision was leaked in May 2022, and especially on the campaign trail and in year one of his second term, Trump has tried to both-sides the debate — claiming victory for overturning Roe and sending abortion rights back to the states, “where everybody wanted it.”
For those who do not track the administration’s every move on the issue, I appreciate how there could be cause for confusion or reason to believe it is net-neutral. Last year, for example, the Food and Drug Administration approved a generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone (which was really just a formality); more recently, the president himself advised congressional Republicans to be “flexible” on the Hyde Amendment, the policy that bars federal money from being spent on abortion care. All of this has rattled the base, which has pushed back hard, including at last month’s annual March for Life; Vice President JD Vance took the knocks, calling it the “elephant in the room.”
But do not be fooled. The Contrarian has catalogued a long list of the administration’s devastating attacks on abortion and reproductive rights. And now, thanks to its deliberate about-face on FACE, harassment at clinics — at least those that are still standing — has surged. As of last week, some of the very same people Trump pardoned are back in business, launching a campaign called Rescue Resurrection.
MS NOW reported on a recent meeting organized by Rescue Resurrection founder Randall Terry, OG of Operation Rescue, the group founded in 1986 to mobilize clinic blockades. Without fear of consequences, Terry reports he is gearing up to re-engage. According to the article (which includes interviews with many of the players in the trenches, and is an excellent read), “Trump’s pardons represent an endorsement of sorts from the White House, and his best chance to revitalize a moribund movement … without fear of federal intervention or lasting consequences.”
And in Terry’s own words, “This is our window.” Indeed.
At Jezebel.com, Danielle Han reminded readers of a typical scene during Operation Rescue’s heyday, how members would “handcuff themselves together outside clinics, and then dramatically slump when police tried to arrest them.” But Terry now sees a new opportunity to escalate and get more intense.
Who could be surprised? The Justice Department’s failure to enforce FACE is nothing less than a green light to envision a lawless resurrection.
But the simultaneous manipulation to use FACE to prosecute journalists is an especially insidious affront — proving, once again, that the cruelty is the point. As Contrarian regular Joyce Vance shared, this is about “intimidating journalists and attempting to make them censure themselves out of fear of consequences…. It’s about eroding the free press because the administration can’t afford the criticism.”
Jen Rubin’s Monday column further underscored the role of DOJ and that “no one has been more instrumental than U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in the assault on Americans’ civil liberties and the rule of law domestically and internationally.”
As for the tale of a two-faced FACE Act, it encapsulates the violent split screen playing out in too many American communities. Which protestors will the administration taunt and smear, and which will they lionize? Who will get to freely exercise their First and Second Amendment rights? Who will be harassed, snatched, detained, arrested, targeted? Who will live and who will die?
Truly, this is the FACE of authoritarianism.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law. She also leads strategy and partnerships at Ms. Magazine.
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How the hell they can use a law in such a two faced way is beyond my comprehension. If they’re not going to enforce FACE in terms of protecting visitors into Reproductive care clinics then they can’t use it against journalists either. These people don’t get to decide how a law can and cannot be used. The judiciary needs to call them out on this.