89-Year-Old Death Camp Survivor, 6 Other Pro-Lifers Face 10+ Years in Prison on Face Act Charges
(LifeSiteNews) — Seven pro-life advocates, including a communist prison camp survivor, face over a decade in prison after having been convicted on Tuesday for a peaceful protest conducted outside of an abortion facility.
Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Joel Curry, Justin Phillips, Cal Zastrow, his daughter Eva Zastrow, and 89-year-old Eva Edl, who survived a concentration camp, were found guilty of violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and of a “conspiracy against rights,” a charge originally created to deal with the Ku Klux Klan.
“Isn’t Jesus good? Let’s go to the sidewalk and sing,” Cal Zastrow reportedly said immediately after the verdict.
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Their conviction stems from a “rescue” protest the pro-lifers conducted outside of the Northland Family Planning Clinic in Sterling Heights, Michigan — an abortion mill where preborn babies are killed — along with a group of other pro-life advocates. Edl and Idoni were also convicted on a charge due to a similar protest they participated in at the Women’s Health Clinic abortuary in Saginaw, Michigan.
All seven pro-lifers could face over 10 years in prison as well as hundreds of thousands in fines upon sentencing.
Edl, who came close to death by starvation and endured squalid conditions as a little girl in a Yugoslavian concentration camp, has contemplated the possibility that she may die in prison after sentencing for this peaceful pro-life protest.
“When I was indicted, I began to prepare to die there,” Edl told The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan earlier this year. “Right now, I am ambivalent. … I’m doing the best I can to get ready. Haven’t talked to a funeral director yet.”
“I’m just being sensible,” she added. “There’s no guarantee that I survive it.”
“I feel very strongly, because of my background, that human life is sacred,” she told Olohan. “Government does not have the authority to permit what God forbids. And murder is forbidden by God.”
Throughout the trial on Tuesday, Edl testified that what sustains her is her faith in Jesus Christ and her understanding that suffering strengthens her, The Daily Wire reported.
She compared the trials with a blacksmith’s “refining fire,” telling the Wire, “We need suffering in our lives in order to be purified and not feel sorry about ourselves,” adding that Christians should say, “Hammer away, Lord, at that anvil.”
Former rescuer Caroline Davis was also charged for the Northland protest, but she is now cooperating with the government and has agreed to testify against her co-defendants at this trial, as she has during other rescue trials. She “pled down her felony charge to a misdemeanor” and has not yet been sentenced for the Michigan rescue, according to The Daily Wire.
Judge Matthew Leitman, an Obama appointee, reportedly “clashed” with Phillips’ attorney David Peters throughout the trial. On Monday, Leitman accused Peters of going “way over the line” by pointing out that the conspiracy against rights charge was designed to deal with groups like the Ku Klux Klan and not peaceful demonstrators.
READ: 3 more pro-lifers sentenced on FACE Act charges after Biden DOJ prosecution
Later, when Peters quoted John Adams’ remark that the Constitution was made for a “moral and religious people,” Leitman reportedly said that he was laying the foundation for jury nullification, in which a jury member opts to not convict due to a moral objection to the law.
Thomas More Society attorneys have filed a Motion to Dismiss the felony “Conspiracy Against Rights” charge, asserting that the June 28 Supreme Court decision Fischer v. United States “prevents the Department of Justice’s use of the statute to multiply the potential prison time associated with non-violent, first-time FACE Act charges.”
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Beijing Has ‘No Intention’ of Nuclear Arms Race With US – Foreign Ministry
Washington’s fear-mongering over China’s nuclear arsenal is completely unfounded, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning has said. Her comment came after the New York Times reported on Tuesday that US President Joe Biden had quietly updated the Nuclear Employment Guidance, refocusing its aim against China.
Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, Mao said that Beijing was “gravely concerned”with the report. “The US has called China a ‘nuclear threat’ and used it as a convenient pretext for the US to shirk its obligation of nuclear disarmament,” she said.
Mao added that the size of China’s nuclear arsenal was “by no means on the same level with the US,” stressing that Beijing “follows a policy of ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons and always keeps its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required by national security.” China has “no intention to engage in any form of arms race” with other states, she stated.
“It is the US who is the primary source of nuclear threats and strategic risks in the world,” the spokeswoman argued.
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In 2023, the Pentagon estimated that China will double its stockpile of operational nuclear warheads to over 1,000 by 2030. The US currently has 5,550 warheads, while Russia has 6,255, according to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The White House has downplayed China’s concerns, with spokesman Sean Savett describing the change in nuclear strategy as a routine update that was “not a response to any single entity, country, nor threat.” US officials, however, have repeatedly described Beijing as “a challenge” to world peace and accused it of economic and military coercion in the Indo-Pacific. Beijing, in turn, blamed the US for the ongoing tensions, urging Washington to abandon the “Cold-War mentality.”
Texas is Sued Over Attempts to End Online Anonymity
Free speech group the Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE) has gone to court in a bid to block Texas state age verification law, Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act (SCOPE Act, HB 18).
We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.
This largely Republican-backed law will take effect on September 1, starting when online platforms will be under obligation to register and verify the age of all users.
This will apply if “more than a third” of content on the platforms is considered “harmful” or “obscene.”
But FIRE believes this is a form of pressure to make sure sites collect biometric and ID data from adults in Texas as they access what is lawful (to them) content.
Hence the case, Students Engaged in Advancing Texas v. Paxton, where FIRE is suing state Attorney General Ken Paxton on behalf of four plaintiffs that the group says would have their rights threatened by the SCOPE Act – unless the US District Court for the Western District of Texas issues declaratory and injunctive relief.
In other words, FIRE wants the judges to stop the enforcement of the law, which the filing brands as unconstitutional.
Said FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere: “In a misguided attempt to make the internet ‘safe’, Texas’ law treats adults like children. But even minors have First Amendment rights. Whether they’re 16 or 65, this law infringes on the rights of all Texans.”
This is by no means a sole voice expressing disagreement with the idea that more, and more invasive online censorship and surveillance will result in better protection of children.
Senator Rand Paul has penned an opinion piece where he goes after the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which has raised privacy, censorship, and digital ID concerns among civil rights activists.
According to Paul, what motivated those behind the legislation to come up with it is not questionable, but the actual bill falls short to the point where it “promises to be a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences.”
The senator notes that those pushing the bill insist the goal is not to regulate content, but he believes online platforms would face unprecedented demands regarding mental health harms, like anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.
However, Paul believes – “imposing a duty of care on internet platforms associated with mental health can only lead to one outcome: the stifling of First Amendment–protected speech” while at the same time empowering “speech police” to “silence important and diverse discussions that are essential to a free society.”
Paul speaks in favor of making sure those protections continue to apply and suggests coming up with “clear” rules for platforms, allowing them to comply with the law.
But KOSA, according to him, “fails to do that in almost every respect.”
The senator sees it as (yet another) bill that is too vague for (legal) comfort, so much so that “many of its key provisions are completely undefined.”
Trump Vows To Rehire & Compensate Service Members Fired For Refusing Covid Jabs
Donald Trump has said that all US military members who were discharged for refusing a mandatory Covid-19 vaccine would be rehired with backpay if he is re-elected as president “Kamala and Crooked Joe purged 8,000 […]
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