House Republicans condemned Biden administration officials for snatching pro-life activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act which made it clear that they would seek at repealing the statute after the president-elect Donald Trump is sworn into the presidency.

Rep. Chip Roy, chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, told a committee hearing that “it is long past time for Congress to address this weaponization legislatively.”

“While we expect the incoming administration to end this horrific practice of the DOJ, that is not good enough,” said the Texas Republican. “The American people deserve to know that their rights will not be violated regardless of which administration is in power.”

The law of 1994 applies to attacks on abortion clinics as well pro-life centers for pregnancy. However, under the presidency of Joe Biden Justice Department officials Justice Department brought 24 cases against 55 defendants, and has won 34 convictions, excluding two of them were pro-life advocates.

This skewed prosecutorial rate comes despite the fact that nearly 100 pro-life organizations were targeted since June 2022 publication of Supreme Court’s majority opinion that overturned Roe V. Wade, including at least three bombings.

The witness at the hearing included Paul Vaughn, who was accused of a crime pursuant to the FACE Act for a March 2021 protest, during which a group of activists were able to pray and sing hymns while they sat before the entrance to the abortion center in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee.

18 months later 18 months later, 18 months later. Vaughn said, a group of FBI agents were able to arrest him at gunpoint in his house before his wife and 11 children during what was described as a SWAT-style search however he wasn’t among the eight individuals arrested at the demonstration.

“It’s a tool whose sole purpose is to stifle free speech and abuse the rights of Christian conservatives,” Mr. Vaughn said of the FACE Act.

His sentence was three years’ supervision release.

Others have been sentenced to long prison sentences of years due to FACE Act violations, including Lauren Handy, who is serving a 57-month jail sentence for preventing an abortion clinic’s entry at a protest in 2020 at Washington, D.C.

Democrats were in favor of they defended the FACE Act, which was promulgated on the day of 1994, by President Bill Clinton after a rash of attacks against abortion clinics as well as the 1993 murder of an abortionist in Florida.

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, Pennsylvania Democrat and the top member of the House, blamed FACE Act antipathy on Project 2025 The Heritage Foundation’s wish list for conservatives for the upcoming administration that was announced in January.

“This attack on the FACE Act is part of a coordinated, extreme anti-choice agenda that seeks to gut reproductive rights and effectively ban abortion care in the United States,” she stated. “That agenda is outlined in the extremist conservative manifesto called Project 2025.”

She pointed out that one the Republican witnesses attorney Erin Hawley, is senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the more than 100 organizations who sit on the project’s advisory committee.

Mrs. Hawley told the committee that the Biden administration boosted it’s FACE Act prosecutions by pairing them with “conspiracy against rights” charges against pro-life advocates in what she called an unusual decision.

A first violation of the FACE Act would normally result in six months of prison According to her, “but if you tack on a conspiracy to violate civil rights, you get 10 years.”

She pointed to the case of the 89-year-old Eva Edl, a wheelchair-bound Soviet victim of the concentration camp who is currently awaiting sentence following her conviction of her part in the blocking in 2020 of the abortion center situated in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

“For sitting in her wheelchair–she was blocking an entrance but sitting in a wheelchair, blocking an entrance, praying and singing hymns–she is subject to 11 years in federal prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines,” said Ms. Hawley.

He. Roy said he hopes that Mr. Trump will pardon the life-affirming activists convicted in 2021 in the FACE Act when he assumes his post.

“The Trump administration should consider pardoning and commuting the sentences of FACE Act defendants who have been victims of this targeted harassment,” Mr. Roy said. “Unequal enforcement of the law isn’t law. It’s the rule of tyranny.”