Federal sentences for three defendants imposed Sept. 26-27 in connection with a March 5, 2021, blockade of an abortion clinic in Mount Juliet, Tenn. leave only sentencing in a Michigan case in the current round of Justice Department prosecutions of clinic blockades.
Judge Aleta Trauger of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee sentenced Chester Gallagher, 73, of Lebanon, Tenn., a former Las Vegas police officer and the organizer of the blockade, to 16 months in prison and three years of supervised release for the blockade at the carafem abortion clinic on March 5, 2021.
Heather Idoni, 63, a former bookstore owner from Linden, Mich., was sentenced to eight months in prison, to run concurrently with the two-year sentence she has been serving for a 2020 clinic blockade in Washington.
Eva Edl, 89, of Aiken, S.C., whose involvement in clinic protests goes back to the 1980s, received three years of probation.
All were convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, as well as a felony charge of conspiracy against rights.
Gallagher, Idoni and El also face sentencing for their convictions over blockades at Michigan abortion clinics on Aug. 27, 2020, and – for only Idoni and Edl – at Women’s Health Clinic in Saginaw in April 2021.
Eight other defendants were given various sentences All are evangelicals.
Henry Leventis, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said in a statement that Gallagher’s sentence was “a reminder that we cannot pick and choose which laws we follow, and that those who violate the law will be held accountable.”
The FACE Act, adopted in 1994, prohibits obstruction and intimidation at both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers that counsel against abortion.
The Catholic Church opposes abortion because it holds that all human life is sacred from conception to natural death. The Church also makes clear that all advocacy for justice must use only moral means, with St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, stating that a person cannot “intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order ... even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general.
All the FACE Act trials since 2022 have ended in convictions of all defendants.
Stay Connected With Us