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A pro-life activist has received a seven-figure settlement nearly four years after an early morning FBI raid on his home generated outrage and concern about the federal government’s treatment of pro-life advocates outside abortion clinics.
In a statement published Thursday, the pro-life advocacy group 40 Days for Life Institute of Law & Justice announced that pro-life activist Mark Houck won a settlement of over $1 million nearly four years after the early morning FBI raid on his home generated outrage. Houck, a devout Catholic father of seven, was charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act by the Biden administration in 2022.
The FACE Act subjects anyone who “intentionally injures, intimidates, or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person” who provides or assists in the provision of abortions to federal charges. The charges against Houck stemmed from an incident that took place as Houck and his son prayed outside an abortion clinic in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in October 2021.
While the U.S. Department of Justice alleged that Houck “twice assaulted a man because he was a volunteer reproductive health care clinic escort,” requiring the escort to receive “medical attention,” a fundraiser set up to pay for Houck’s legal expenses told a different story: “Last year, Mark and his son were praying in front of the PP at 12th and Locust. When one of the escorts began harassing Mark’s son they walked down the street away from the entrance to the building. When one of the escorts began harassing Mark’s son they walked down the street away from the entrance to the building. The escort followed them, and when he continued yelling at Mark’s son, Mark pushed him away.”
While a jury acquitted Houck in early 2023, Houck and his wife filed a lawsuit later that year alleging that the DOJ engaged in malicious and retaliatory prosecution, abuse of process, false arrest and assault.
In a video message last Thursday, 40 Days for Life CEO Shawn Carney described the settlement as “a bigger victory for the pro-life movement at large” as well as “a huge victory for free speech” and “a huge victory for all Americans who want our right to speak our minds peacefully in a law-abiding way without fear of our own government.”
Carney maintained that the charges against Houck came as the pro-life movement and 40 Days for Life, in particular, received “so much persecution from the DOJ under Biden” and expressed gratitude that “President Trump has corrected that.”
“It has been absolutely night and day. Under Biden, at one point, we were getting one to two inquiries from the FBI per week at different 40 Days for Life locations,” he added.
News of Houck’s settlement comes as MS NOW has reported that the DOJ is scheduled to release a report concluding that the Biden administration “shattered the public’s trust by weaponizing the FACE Act to advance a pro-abortion agenda.”
In an interview with The Christian Post, pro-life activists Terrisa Bukovinac and Randall Terry identified DOJ prosecutor Sanjay Patel as a key figure in the targeting of pro-life activists under the Biden administration.
Terry named Patel as the DOJ official responsible for orchestrating the raid on Houck’s home. The Houck raid sparked calls from Bukovinac, Terry and others to impeach then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and repeal the FACE Act. Terry has insisted, both four years ago and today, that the law “broke the back” of the pro-life movement by subjecting those who engage in abortion clinic blockades to federal charges rather than local trespass charges. “It was always designed to isolate people of faith who wanted to defend the unborn,” Terry told CP in an earlier interview.
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