Sores covered nearly every inch of Eva Edl’s emaciated young body. People gagged when they came near her; bed bugs, fleas and lice were devouring her “festering body.”
These sickening details are only a fraction of the horrors young Eva suffered as a victim of the most dreaded communist death camp in Yugoslavia after World War II: Gakova. After years of living in hell, facing death daily, Eva’s family finally escaped to the U.S. They believed that America was free, and that their rights would be protected by a government with their best interests at heart.
Today, the government they trusted is fighting to throw 87-year-old Eva into prison for her pro-life advocacy.
Sadly, Eva’s plight perfectly exemplifies how dangerous the weaponization of the U.S. government has become, and how far the left will go to punish anyone who interferes with their radical agenda.
Eva is one of four pro-life advocates recently convicted under the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which prohibits the use of force, threat of force or physical obstruction to prevent women from obtaining or providing “reproductive health care services.”
In March 2021, Eva and other pro-life advocates participated in a prayer protest inside a Tennessee abortion clinic. The pro-lifers stood in front of the clinic’s doors while peacefully singing Christian hymns and praying.
For this, they face up to six months in prison, five years of “supervised release” and fines up to $10,000. (Typically, FACE Act violations carry a maximum sentence of up to 11 years in prison, and up to $250k in fines.)
Meanwhile, pro-abortion rights extremists firebomb, vandalize and terrorize pro-life centers and Catholic Churches with impunity.
It is unquestionable that Eva and her pro-life compatriots’ prosecutions are intended to send a message. The FBI and Department of Justice have prosecuted nonviolent pro-life offenders with the FACE Act, while turning a blind eye to the violent, ongoing and terrifying attacks on other institutions protected by the FACE Act: churches and pregnancy help centers.
My organization has been highlighting this dangerous double-standard, warning Americans that the Justice Department and FBI are exploiting the FACE Act to target and harass individuals like Eva who stand in the way of their extremist agendas.
Just this month, a man named Elliot Bennet set fire to a Catholic Church in New Jersey. This was the third time Bennet had committed acts of violence or vandalism against the church since 2018, the 21st attack on a Catholic Church in 2024, the 274th attack since May 2022 and the 412th attack since May 2020.
Yet the same Justice Department that is fighting to throw Eva in jail failed to prosecute Bennet for these multiple and obvious FACE Act violations. It has also failed to federally prosecute a single one of the more than 400 egregious FACE Act violations against Catholic Churches since May 2020, or to meaningfully address the 90 attacks on pregnancy resource centers across the nation since May 2022.
These attacks don’t involve prayer and hymns. They’ve involved fire-bombings and arson, vandalism of pregnancy clinics and churches, spray painted threats on clinic and church walls, decapitated statues, smashed glass, disrupted masses, blocking of church entrances and even physical attacks on priests and parishioners. They have cost at least $25 million in damages to Catholic Churches, while intimidating hundreds of peaceful Catholic and pro-life communities.
That’s why we just sent a letter to the Justice Department highlighting again the disparity in its enforcement of the FACE Act. Our letter demanded that the department do its job and defend pro-life Americans from violence.
We have little reason to believe our letter will elicit tangible change.
Our past experiences calling on the Justice Department and FBI to fairly enforce the law have been met with stonewalling, empty answers and no meaningful action. At the very least, however, we hope that our letter serves as a warning to Americans and to Republicans in Congress who have the opportunity to take a stand against the Biden administration’s weaponized agencies.
Tommy Valentine is director of CatholicVote’s Accountability Project.