Christine Flowers: Minnesota church invaders deserve the FACE Act

A few years ago, I had to do some research into the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act, colloquially known as FACE.

Every pro-lifer in the country knows about this law, signed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton to protect abortion clinics from, essentially, me.

When I say “me,” I’m not exactly referring to people who hold rosaries and pray the Hail Mary while abortion supporters yell mean things about my mother.

FACE was meant to address what was then a growing epidemic of violence against people and places that provided abortion services.

While I am as pro-life as they come, refusing to even acknowledge an exception for rape or incest, I acknowledge that there are violent people in the anti-abortion movement.

There are men like Eric Rudolph, the notorious Atlanta Olympics Bomber, who two years later bombed a clinic in Birmingham, Ala., killing an off-duty police officer.

There was Scott Roeder, who shot Dr. George Tiller outside of a church service in Nebraska, killing one of the only physicians in the country who performed late-term abortions.

There was Paul Hill, who murdered Dr. Bayard Britton and a clinic volunteer in Pensacola, Florida; Michael Griffin, who murdered Dr. David Gunn, also in Florida; and James Kopp, who shot and killed Dr. Barnett Slepian as he was coming home from attending his own father’s funeral.

There were women, too, most notably Shelly Shannon, who shot at Dr. Tiller years before he was gunned down by Roeder. She unapologetically defended her acts by comparing abortion providers to Hitler.

There is no doubt that FACE was enacted to protect people exercising what was then their constitutional right to an abortion.

Although that right was overturned in 2024 to the great joy and delight of this columnist, it is nonetheless true that abortion was a fundamental right until the Dobbs decision, and people were entitled to exercise that right without fearing for their own lives.

Interestingly, though, there is a part of FACE that is never discussed. Perhaps as a grudging nod to the conservatives who weren’t too thrilled to have federal law protecting abortion clinics, Congress included places of worship in the Act, writing:

“Whoever — by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship … shall be subject to the penalties provided in subsection (b) and the civil remedies provided in subsection (c).”

Those penalties include fines and the possibility of imprisonment of up to three years in a federal facility.

I’m sure that the drafters of the Act weren’t contemplating that a band of anti-ICE protesters was going to invade a church in Minnesota and terrorize the congregation, including little children.

Their idea of a threat was likely limited to the folks who protested at abortion clinics.

They envisioned middle-aged white men armed with guns or at least with pictures of bloody aborted fetuses screaming at women in front of Planned Parenthood.

The truth is that the vast majority of pro-lifers simply stand in silent prayer, and speaking for myself, the only weapon I carry is what someone once termed my “assault rosaries.”

But times they are a-changing, and there was an invasion of a church this month, ostensibly because of rumors that its pastor worked for ICE.

A group of people, many of them wearing masks, rushed into the church and deliberately disrupted the services, chanting things that no child should be forced to hear while sitting in a pew.

Now, anyone who has read my recent columns knows that I strongly oppose the actions of this government when it comes to immigration.

I’m especially angered by the inhumanity displayed by ICE when it arrests people whose only crime is being undocumented. There is a brutality that I have not seen in many years.

Just wait a week and I’ll likely write another one of those pieces that get me labeled a “crazy libturd.”

But fair is fair. What happened in Minnesota was a disgusting display of arrogance, bigotry, ignorance and hypocrisy. It was also a federal crime.

When it happened, I filmed a video expressing my view that the people who stormed that church should be charged under the FACE Act, just as so many pro-lifers have had to defend themselves in federal court.

We cannot sit by while radical extremists show blatant disregard for the First Amendment rights of worshipers, regardless of the faith they profess or the opinions they hold, simply because they disagree with the government.

Last time I checked, the Free Exercise Clause was still in effect, and didn’t come with an asterisk that said “unless we don’t like your politics.”

So excuse me for smiling when the DOJ files charges against these disrupters, using a law that was meant to keep me from praying in front of an abortion clinic with my lethal beads.

This article originally appeared in the Delco Times.

Christine Flowers can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.