Pro-life activist sentenced under FACE Act vows to continue 'biblical obedience'
A pro-life activist sentenced to 60 days in jail for blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic plans to appeal the conviction, maintaining that he was committing an act of "biblical obedience."
Pro-life activist Steve Lefemine was sentenced to 60 days in prison and must pay a $1,000 fine for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act by blocking the entrance to the Planned Parenthood in Columbia, South Carolina, federal prosecutors announced on Aug. 1
Enacted in 1994, the FACE Act subjects anyone who "by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services" to federal charges.
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Lefemine told The Christian Post he filed a notice of appeal last week with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He plans to consider an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary, describing his trial as "unjust."
"I made a motion for an allowance of a necessity defense," he said. "The assistant U.S. attorney opposed it, and the court denied it."
"The defense of necessity begins with putting on the record that the … life inside the womb is a human being and that it is facing imminent death by abortion. And if the court rejects the defense that the life inside the womb is human … it has a God-given unalienable right to life, then there's no defense, no rational defense other than just conducting a protest why I was sitting in front of the door."
The incident that caused Lefemine to face FACE Act charges occurred on Nov. 15, 2022.
"The day I did this was a typical abortion day. They normally kill at this Planned Parenthood on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the day that I interposed was a Tuesday," he recalled.
"So, that is a typical abortion day and it's why I was there, interposing between children who were going to be killed by abortion and those who would commit the abortion inside the building," he proclaimed. "That's not just a protest, that's not just civil disobedience, that's biblical obedience, that's loving our neighbor as ourselves."
Lefemine asserts his actions are consistent with the command in Proverbs 24:10-12, which he summarized as an instruction "not just to stand back and let innocent parties die." He reiterated his belief, "There's an aspect of civil disobedience, but it's primarily biblical obedience."
The forthcoming prison sentence would not mark the first instance that Lefemine has faced time behind bars during his 35 years of pro-life activism.
He previously spent 27 days in prison for an abortion clinic blockade in Greenville, 25 days for another blockade in South Carolina and approximately three weeks for a similar incident that took place in Buffalo, New York.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that characterized abortion as a national right, pro-life activists have called for the repeal of the FACE Act.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, introduced legislation to repeal the FACE Act in the U.S. House of Representatives. As of Tuesday, the bill has attracted 45 co-sponsors, all Republicans. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced companion legislation in the U.S. Senate. Lefemine lamented, "Neither bill has even had a subcommittee hearing yet."
In a previous interview with The Christian Post, Randall Terry, who founded the pro-life advocacy group Operation Rescue, known for organizing blockades of abortion clinics, said the FACE Act was "designed to isolate people of faith who wanted to defend the unborn."
He maintained that the law "effectively broke the back of our movement" by imposing federal charges on those who engaged in such blockades.
Despite the consequences, Lefemine remains undeterred from pro-life activism.
"By the grace and mercy of God, I intend to continue as long as the Lord leads me and allows me to oppose the murder of innocent human beings in our country, the shedding of innocent blood," he vowed.
"If we look in Scripture, there's numerous connections between national judgments and the shedding of innocent blood. … That is what killing children in the womb is," he asserted. "It's Proverbs 6:16-17, it says God hates hands that shed innocent blood. He considers it an abomination."
"There's connections between how God deals not just with the individual woman or the abortionist or the boyfriend that may be pressuring a girlfriend to get an abortion but there's a judgment that comes on nations that shed innocent blood," he continued. "I expressed this in the hearing, the sentencing hearing on July 31. I wrote about it in the sentencing memorandum I filed prior to the sentencing hearing."
Lefemine identified judgments imposed on nations in Scripture as "invasion, violence and oppresssion." Pointing to what he described as "invasion" on the southern border, referring to a large number of illegal border crossings, Lefemine proclaimed, "I believe our nation's being judged for the shedding of innocent blood."
"It's a national sin just as unbiblical American slavery was a national sin," he added. Lefemine shared the opinion of George Mason, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention who remarked that "by an inevitable chain of causes and effects, providence punishes national sins [by] national calamities."
"If you look at American history, especially from 1820 on up to 1860, there was national crisis after national crisis over the issue of slavery," he said, calling the Civil War "our most costly war in terms of lives lost."
He expressed concern that the U.S. was "already living" through a "national judgment for this national sin" of "child murder by abortion."
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
