US Charges 11 Pro-Life Activists for Blocking Access to Abortion Clinic

U.S. prosecutors charged 11 pro-life activists with violating federal law by blocking access to an abortion clinic in Tennessee in 2021.

Prosecutors say Chester Gallagher and others conspired to blockade a clinic in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, utilizing Facebook to coordinate travel and logistics for co-defendants.

Caroline Davis, also a defendant, at one point wrote to Coleman Boyd, who was also charged, that she would meet him for a “rescue” in Tennessee in March 2021.

The group did block a woman and an employee from entering the clinic, authorities said, citing a livestream broadcast by Boyd. The broadcast was titled “Mt. Juliet, TN Rescue March 5, 2021.” The group went into the hallway outside the clinic’s two entry doors before it was scheduled to open.

Gallagher said on a separate livestream that he and those with him were “willing to be incarcerated” to “rescue families from this place of destruction.”

Local police officers arrested nine people, including Gallagher. The people went inside the facility “and basically just sat down, and they were not going to leave,” Mount Juliet Police Department Capt. Tyler Chandler said at the time.

A federal grand jury has indicted Gallagher, Davis, Boyd, Heather Idoni, Dennis Green, Calvin Zastrow, and Paul Vaughn on charges of civil rights conspiracy and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act). Eva Edl, Eva Zastro, James Zastro, and Paul Place were charged only with violating the FACE Act.

Civil rights law prohibits two or more people conspiring “to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person … in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

The FACE Act bars obstructing people from obtaining “reproductive health services,” including abortions.

If convicted, those charged with conspiracy face up to

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