By FRANK PAVONE
My friend Mark Houck has won a great victory, with the help of the Thomas More Society (also my friends), who defend pro-life activists all over the country against the weaponization of the law by pro-abortion people. As you likely have read before, Mark was peacefully praying in front of an abortion mill, and had to defend his son against aggressive pro-abortion harassment.
In a move that manifests their arrogance, abortion proponents claimed he violated the FACE law, which says you cannot physically interfere with the provision of reproductive services.
Ultimately, the jury disagreed, hence saving not only Mark, but all of us, from a chillingly expansive application of a law that many claim is already unconstitutional.
When Bill Clinton signed the FACE law in 1994, I was already a national pro-life leader and was praying in front of abortion mills from coast to coast. On one occasion, as I offered — with a smile — a pamphlet about nearby pregnancy centers to a mom arriving for her abortion, the pro-abortion escorts standing there said to one another, “If that isn’t intimidation, I don’t know what is.”
According to the FACE law, if two people are peacefully sitting in front of a building and one is there to block people from going in to have their baby killed, and the other is there to stop animal experimentation occurring in the same building, the one trying to stop abortion would be guilty of a federal crime, but the other would not.
There are already laws against trespassing and violence. There is no need for FACE.
Not only is it constitutionally troublesome, but it is even more objectionable from a moral perspective. This law doesn’t force one to participate in abortion; but it does try to stop us from loving our neighbor. While allowing us to be against abortion in our mind and heart, it punishes us for actually trying to stop our youngest neighbors from being dismembered. It tries to put a cap on our love.
Just after the FACE law came into effect, I visited with Mother Teresa for several days in Calcutta, and explained the law to her. “Fr. Frank,” she replied, “If we had that law here in India, I would have been thrown in jail many times, because I go to the places where abortions are done, and I take the young mothers by the arm and pull them away, and tell them that our sisters and I will care for them and their baby.”
That’s love. That’s the love that motivates Mark Houck to go to the abortion facilities, not just mentally, but physically. That’s the love that inspires the entire pro-life movement.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who founded the abortion industry, became pro-life because he saw, among other things, the power of love manifested in people making sacrifices for the unborn by coming physically to the places where they are killed. He and I spoke about this several times. That love led him to faith in God.
Mark Houck’s victory is more than a legal victory. It is a victory for love — the love that we give to the children in the womb in the same way we give it to born children. Where they are in danger, we will show up. When their lives need to be saved, we will sacrifice what we need to sacrifice to save them.
The pro-life movement is a movement of love. If it weren’t, it would be nothing. But because it is, nothing can stop it.
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