Five pro-life advocates face 11 years in prison and USD $350,000 each in fines for a non-violent protest in 2020.
80-year-old, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ran an emotionally charged session, which LiveAction described as both heated and biased.
Not only did the District of Columbia, Clinton-appointee, rule against the pre-born civil rights protestors, she apparently hindered their ability to mount a proper defence.
Judge Kotelly refused to admit 2012 video evidence of abortionist Cesare Santangelo at the Washington Surgi-Clinic (WSC), admitting he had no problem letting babies born alive die.
Discarding key context for the 2020 non-violent protests, Judge Kotelly characterised the video as “gossip from propagandists.”
In the video, Santangelo is asked, “Does the child wiggle when it is pulled out?
“That’s why I try to sever the umbilical cord first, and we wait for that to stop pulsing, and this way the foetus [child] is expired first, so it doesn’t,” he replied.
Questioned by an undercover LiveAction reporter about what he would do if her unborn child of 25 weeks survived, he said, “Usually at this point in your pregnancy – it’s too early to survive. It [the baby] will expire shortly after birth. Technically we’re legally obligated to help it [the baby] survive.”
He then added, “But you know… if you delivered before we got to the termination part, then we would do things – we would not help it.”
Santangelo’s admissions, and decades-long pro-termination practices, triggered the March 2020 non-violent sit-in demonstration, called a rescue action.
Of the nine arrested by the FBI in 2022 for allegedly “conspiring to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate “patients” and employees at the “reproductive healthcare facility,” Judge Kotelly gaoled five.
She decided there was a conspiracy to breach the Clinton-era Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) act.
As a result, Lauren Handy, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, William Goodman, and Herb Geraghty, will stay in prison until they’re sentenced.
28-year-old Lauren Handy was crucial to exposing Santangelo’s medical mistreatment of unborn children last year.
Five, complete, aborted babies – now known as The Five – were among 115 ‘foetal remains’ recovered by Handy and another protester in 2022.
Handy received the boxes of “waste” from a Medical Waste Services truck driver outside Santangelo’s abortion clinic.
One baby was big enough to have been in a nursery.
Another, named “Baby X” was born in its amniotic sac, suggesting that Baby X ‘could have been born alive,’ as I reported at the time.
If you don’t recall this story, it’s because news about it was suppressed, or completely ignored by legacy media.
Speaking up, The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles slammed Biden’s Department of Justice.
He inferred that the court proceedings were a pro-abortion show trial, in line with the Woke White House’s war on behalf of far-left ‘political activism.’
Knowles said these advocates are the “five latest political prisoners to be thrown in goal by evil regime apparatchiks.”
They “face a decade in prison for the simple act of opposing abortion,” he said.
“They didn’t set off any bombs. They didn’t shoot anybody. They just demonstrated against illegal abortions carried out by the baby butcher, Cesare Santangelo.”
Replying to Judge Kotelly’s ruling, LiveAction founder, Lila Rose stated in a thread on X, “Judge Kollar-Kotelly has repeatedly shown her pro-abortion bias during this trial and made a total mockery of our justice system.
“This potential sentencing of 11 years in prison is a blatant abuse of political power against pro-lifers.
“In their efforts to end injustice happening in our nation’s capital, these five pro-life heroes have fallen victim to an unjust court and depraved administration.
“Every American citizen concerned about upholding justice should demand that this decision be overturned,” she added.
Alongside Judge Kotelly’s noted bias, LiveAction highlighted the weaponised abuse of language by the Biden prosecution.
Lawyers for the DOJ referred to the violent termination of life in the womb as ‘care, treatment, and absolutely needed.’
Prosecutors also jeered, and used condescending remarks against those on trial, inferring, in sum, that the non-violent protest was akin to “domestic terrorism.”
The pro-life advocate’s legal term, headed by the Thomas Moore Society, will be appealing the appalling pro-abortion precedent.
Senior counsel, Martin Cannon, told CBN, “We are preparing an appeal and will continue to defend those who fight for life against a Biden Department of Justice that seems intent on prosecuting those who decry abortion.”
The persecution of the pro-life five is part of an apparent, coordinated series of state-sponsored legal attacks on pre-born civil rights advocacy groups (see here, here, and here).
While five non-violent protestors face having their lives destroyed, the real criminals here are free to fuel their abortion mills with as much money, and violence as they like.
Remember it’s an election cycle.
In Joebama’s world, these protesters are political pawns, and they’re considered to be expendable.
Biden’s handlers chasing Handy’s head looks a lot like “death to America” Democrats vying for payback after the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
With sympathisers like Judge Kotelly, they just might get it too.
