A Michigan federal judge has paused the sentencing of seven pro-life activists unjustly convicted under the FACE Act and conspiracy charges related to protests at abortion clinics.
The stay, issued by Judge Matthew Leitman, delays proceedings until after President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The pro-life activists, including Eva Edl and Heather Idoni, face over 10 years in prison and significant fines related to the lawfare prosecution the Biden administration brought.
The case has drawn attention for the Biden administration’s application of conspiracy laws originally aimed at combating the Ku Klux Klan against pro-life demonstrators. Here’s more:
Judge Matthew Leitman ordered Tuesday that the FACE Act and felony conspiracy case against the pro-life activists be paused until after President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The pro-lifers, including 89-year-old communist concentration camp survivor Eva Edl, face up to 10 years for their conviction on conspiracy charges in September.
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Sentencing had not yet been scheduled due to several pending motions from the defense to dismiss the convictions that Leitman has not yet ruled on. These motions will further be delayed due to the judge’s latest order.
“As further discussed on the record, the Court will conduct another status conference during the week of March 24, 2025, to receive a report from the Government trial team as to whether there has been any change in the Government’s position with respect to the continuation of this case and/or with respect to the positions expected to be advanced by the Defendants in their post-trial motions,” Leitman, an Obama appointee, wrote in a court order viewed by The Daily Wire.
Leitman’s order comes as there is anticipation that President-elect Donald Trump may quickly move to pardon the pro-lifers who have been imprisoned under Biden. Back in June, Trump promised to review the cases of “every political prisoner,” including people imprisoned over the FACE Act.
On of the pro-life protesters, Eva Edl, is an 87-year-old woman who is a concentration camp survivor.
Edl is a German survivor of a communist prisoner-of-war concentration camp during World War II. After she escaped that horror, Edl dedicated her life to fighting for human rights for everyone — including people before birth.
The Biden administration has been under heavy criticism as Joe Biden’s Justice Department targets peaceful pro-life Americans for protesting abortions in such as a way that they blocked access to an abortion center.
The Justice Department has charged 11 more pro-life activists with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act for blocking the entrance of an abortion clinic in 2021. The 11 activists were charged with FACE Act violations stemming from their 2021 “blockade” of an abortion clinic in Mount Juliet, Tennessee.
A federal indictment alleges that the pro-life defendants “engaged in a conspiracy to prevent the clinic from providing” and patients from receiving abortion services and violated the FACE Act by “using physical obstruction to intimidate and interfere with the clinic’s employees and a patient.”
Yet the event was mostly pro-life people staging a peaceful sit in along with signing and praying and it was so lawful and peaceful that local police let them go after minor misdemeanor charges. But if convicted on these federal charges from the Biden administration, some of the pro-life advocates face up to 11 years in prison, three years supervised release and fines of up to $350,000.
Edl previously spoke up about why she protests abortion.
“The first time I realized there were abortion clinics in our country was in 1988,” she said, according to a previous Live Action News report. “I said to my husband, ‘these are the death camps of America.’ I saw people sitting in front of abortion clinics in Atlanta, and I’ve been involved ever since.”
If you were in a death camp like I was as a girl, would you want those who were obligated to love you to lobby for cleaner death camps? Less bugs in our starvation diet? Please! It disgusts the Lord that we waste so much time on money that will not protect one single child, even if the legislation is upheld by the court.
[…] If we have to defy the judiciary for even the most toothless attempts to regulate abortion (mandating sanitary killing centers, for example), why not defy the judiciary to protect every child, as our leaders take an oath to do! Why settle for less than the very minimum that God settles for? According to the Bible (Numbers 35, Genesis 9), only justice abates the wrath of God for the shedding of innocent blood. I believe every jurisdiction – city, county, state, federal, international – should immediately criminalize every abortion and protect every baby, and WOE unto us if we don’t.
The wrath of God is against us, and time is short to waste effort trying to regulate the child-killing. We wind up on the wrong side of the line God’s drawn so clearly in the sand.
