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BREAKING: 11 pro-life activists charged under the federal F.A.C.E. Act
Live Action News ^ | July 19, 2017 | Carole Novielli

Posted on 07/19/2017 11:30:13 AM PDT by Morgana

Eleven pro-life activists have been charged with violating the federal F.A.C.E. act following a peaceful rescue event outside a Kentucky abortion facility in May. The event, held outside the EMW women’s abortion facility in Louisville, was organized by Operation Save America (OSA). Rev. Rusty Thomas, national director of Operation Save America (OSA), said he decided to check his e-mail late Tuesday evening he discovered that he along with ten other pro-life activists had been formally charged under the federal F.A.C.E. act.

F.A.C.E. is the “Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act,” a draconian piece of legislation signed into law by former President Bill Clinton in 1994. The text of the law is available here, and, in part, “prohibits the use or threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services.” Stiff fines and penalties often apply to anyone convicted under the charges.

The F.A.C.E. Act came into effect during a season when the pro-life group Operation Rescue was having an impact in closing abortion facilities by using non-violent peaceful protest to intervene on behalf of innocent preborn children in the same spirit as the Civil Rights movement. Rev. Rusty Thomas arrested at pro-life rescue May 2017

Rev. Rusty Thomas arrested at pro-life rescue May 2017

Rev. Thomas said that he has been a witness outside abortion facilities for years. But, it was an event in Louisville, Kentucky, on May 13, 2017, that triggered the current charges against him and ten others. Rev. Thomas noted that the last time the federal government unsuccessfully attempted to charge him under the Act was about 15 years ago.

“Normally when we violated F.A.C.E. in the past, the charges came pretty quick,” Rev. Thomas noted. They are doing it right before we were going to Louisville,” he noted. What Rev. Thomas is referring to is OSA’s national event, titled on Facebook, “For such a time as this,” and set to begin on July 22, 2017. He believes the timing of the charges, just days before the national event, is not coincidental in the least. OSA activists charged with F.A.C.E.

OSA activists charged with F.A.C.E.

The civil F.A.C.E. complaint, obtained by Live Action News and signed by Jessica R. C. Malloy, Assistant United States Attorney, Western District of Kentucky, charges that Rev. Thomas, Eva Edl — an elderly concentration camp survivor, which Live Action News has previously profiled — and nine others are “likely to continue to commit violations of the F.A.C.E. Act.”

The complaint goes on to state:

On May 13, 2017, Defendants attempted to, and did by physical obstruction, intentionally interfere with persons who were or had been obtaining or providing reproductive health services. …

Unless defendants are restrained by this Court, defendants will continue to engage in the illegal conduct averred herein.

Rev. Thomas told Live Action News that after the arrest in May, the city charged the protesters with third degree trespass and a small fine.Then, on July 11, 2017, they held a pretrial hearing where Rev. Thomas and the other pro-life activists were issued a “no contact” charge, prohibiting them from even standing on the same side of the street as the abortion facility without an arrest warrant being issued.

“We are not going to be reactionaries. We are continuing with the mission and let the chips fall where they may,” he said.

peaceful pro-life protest

In addition to the civil F.A.C.E. charges, the group was also served with a temporary restraining order (TRO) to prohibit them or “any others acting in concert or in participation with any Defendant” from “using physical obstruction to intentionally interfere” with a person who “was or had been obtaining or providing reproductive health services at EMW Women’s Surgical Center…”

The TRO defines a protected area around the abortion facility as a “buffer zone” and prohibits protesters from “coming within a buffer zone directly outside EMW’s entrance” during the hours the abortion facility is open and including two hours before and two hours after the facility closes.

This week, the Metro City Council has also threatened to issue a “Safety Zone,” Rev. Thomas said. But Rev. Thomas is resolute, telling Live Action News, “We already told them that under no circumstances will we surrender our First Amendment Rights.”

He told Live Action News that he has been working in Kentucky for quite some time to encourage Christians to act where abortion is concerned. Rev. Thomas said he felt convicted in his own heart first:

For the past years, the Lord was dealing with my heart. I knew it was coming. As we were monitoring the situation in Kentucky, it just seemed that was the place.

About six months ago, he was asked by a Kentucky resident to come help their state which has just one abortion facility remaining:

We began calling on the State of Kentucky to ignore Roe and establish justice and abolish abortion. Asking the State magistrates to simply say “No” to the immoral and unrighteous decrees of the federal government.

Then, on May 13, 2017, OSA held a rescue outside the EMW abortion facility in Louisville. Eva Edl praying at EMW abortion clinic (image credit: Jordan Roose)

Eva Edl praying at EMW abortion facility (image credit: Jordan Roose)

Rev. Thomas explained that he believed he and the others needed to set an example that government officials could follow in shutting down the last abortion facility in Kentucky:

How could I expect them to be courageous and to cross the line and stand in the gap, if we as churchmen were not willing to stand first. I just believed they needed to have an example of what interposition looked like. This is what it looked like on the church level – to lay your lives down for others.

Rev. Thomas said the church in Kentucky has risen up and, “Thus far they have embraced the vision and mission.”

The theme of the national event is taken from the Book of Esther: “Have you come into the Kingdom for such a time as this? Could you be the first state to be abortion free and eradicate abortion?” Rev. Rusty Thomas

Rev. Rusty Thomas

OSA has verbal agreements with key pastors to carry out a public witness outside the abortion facility long after Rev. Thomas and the others leave. He described the response as “More fruit than he has ever had before a national event.”

But, Rev. Thomas is concerned:

Now that the price tag has gone up will they continue to stand?

If the church backs down, then the enemy continues his slaughter. When the church continues to stand, that’s when we enter the miraculous. We just have to have the church willing to suffer for the cause of Christ.

Rev. Thomas’ wife, Kendra, said she and her children are at peace no matter what happens. “Rusty and the family counted the cost before he made that stand. We really want God to be glorified in this,” Kendra Thomas told Live Action News just moments after her husband received the e-mail confirming the charges.

We have been praying that God will break the back of F.A.C.E. the way that F.A.C.E. and abortion broke the backs of the babies.

This is completely God’s fight. I suspect the federal government was trying to demoralize us right before the national event. But I suspect God is at work.

Your prayers are special to us.

“They are trying to be smarter than God,” Rev. Rusty Thomas stated, “hopefully they are falling into His trap…”

****VIDEO/IMAGES ON LINK***


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; US: Kentucky
KEYWORDS: abortion; abortionclinic; face; kentucky; louisville; prolife; protests
Yet noting is done to those antifa protesters?
1 posted on 07/19/2017 11:30:14 AM PDT by Morgana
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To: Morgana

“Normally when we violated F.A.C.E. in the past, the charges came pretty quick,”

This guy needs a lawyer.


2 posted on 07/19/2017 11:36:42 AM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: Morgana

There is nothing about abortion that is reproductive or health. It is a logic fallacy.


3 posted on 07/19/2017 11:54:12 AM PDT by Salvavida (The restoration of the U.S.A. starts with filling the pews at every Bible-believing church.)
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To: Morgana

WHERE IS SESSIONS?

Did they have ‘intent’?


4 posted on 07/19/2017 11:58:30 AM PDT by Mr. K (***THERE IS NO CONSEQUENCE OF REPEALING OBAMACARE THAT IS WORSE THAN OBAMACARE ITSELF***)
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To: Morgana
Jessica R. C. Malloy, Assistant United States Attorney, Western District of Kentucky NEEDS TO BE FIRED.
5 posted on 07/19/2017 11:59:55 AM PDT by Mr. K (***THERE IS NO CONSEQUENCE OF REPEALING OBAMACARE THAT IS WORSE THAN OBAMACARE ITSELF***)
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To: BenLurkin

SERIOUSLY! NEVER ADMIT THAT YOU VIOLATED ANYTHING UNLESS UNDER ADVIE OF COUNSEL (for example, in the context of a plea deal).


6 posted on 07/19/2017 12:08:46 PM PDT by piytar (http://www.truthrevolt.org/videos/bill-whittle-number-one-bullet)
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To: Mr. K
She couldn't have done it without approval from her boss.

 

Meet the U.S. Attorney  

John E. Kuhn, Jr., USA-WDKY
 

JOHN E. KUHN, JR is the United States Attorney for the Western District of  Kentucky. Mr. Kuhn began leading the Office in December 2014.  As United States Attorney, he acts as the chief federal law enforcement officer, overseeing prosecutions and other legal work of the Department of Justice in the Western District of Kentucky, which encompasses 53 counties and more than half of Kentucky’s population. 

Mr. Kuhn is a Kentucky native with more than 25 years of legal experience.  He has devoted most of his legal career to public service and has worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for nearly 20 years.  As an Assistant U.S. Attorney for 8 years in the Civil Division, he defended lawsuits filed against the United States and pursued cases against individuals and businesses that defrauded the United States.  As an Assistant U.S. Attorney for 6 years in the Criminal Division, Mr. Kuhn prosecuted violent crime, narcotics cases and white collar offenses.  In addition to his trial work, Mr. Kuhn argued appeals before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and volunteered to serve as a hearing officer in Washington, D.C. and New York City for the Victims Compensation Fund, established for victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.  Before assuming the role of U.S. Attorney, Mr. Kuhn served for more than 4 years as First Assistant U.S. Attorney, supervising the Criminal, Civil and Appellate Divisions of the Office.

Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Kuhn was General Counsel to the Kentucky Secretary of State, the Director of Litigation for the Cabinet for Human Resources Office of Counsel, and a litigation associate at the Louisville law firm of Brown Todd & Heyburn.  In those capacities, Mr. Kuhn handled a broad range of civil cases that included complex commercial litigation, personal injury defense, civil rights cases, domestic relations actions, and equine litigation. 

Mr. Kuhn graduated cum laude from the University of Louisville School of Law and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Kentucky

Updated October 7, 2016

7 posted on 07/19/2017 12:16:02 PM PDT by Bratch ("The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke)
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To: Morgana

Could also stand for Freedom of Access to Church Entrances. Not that the left would pay any price for obstructing these by threat or by force.


8 posted on 07/19/2017 12:19:55 PM PDT by fwdude (Democrats have not been this angry since Republicans freed the slaves.)
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To: Salvavida
There is nothing about abortion that is reproductive or health. It is a logic fallacy.

Exactly. We must learn the code words of the left, which typically mean the exact opposite of how they sound to normal people.

9 posted on 07/19/2017 12:22:11 PM PDT by fwdude (Democrats have not been this angry since Republicans freed the slaves.)
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To: Morgana

Any difference than a government decree stating concentration camps are perfectly legal in Nazi Germany and defiance of such will lead to severe punishment? How far America has fallen. The government and left are no better than the Nazi party. Killing babies has become a Constitutional right and the battle cry from American hell. God and our Founding Fathers are mocked and spit upon.


10 posted on 07/19/2017 12:24:48 PM PDT by shanover (...To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.-S.Adams)
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To: Morgana

A RESCUE is NOT a “protest.”

Firemen do not “protest” a fire.

The cops who remove people who are preventing abortions are making themselves accomplices to murder.

It is the strict, grave duty of the local Catholic bishop, and other moral leaders, to forbid the cops to remove people who are preventing abortions.

Prediction: The local Catholic bishop will say nothing.


11 posted on 07/19/2017 1:38:03 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan (https://youtu.be/IYUYya6bPGw)
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To: Arthur McGowan

Are you praying for the local Bishop? Who is he?


12 posted on 07/19/2017 3:19:18 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (Woe to those who call good evil, and call evil good.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

I forget his name. IIRC, a stinker.


13 posted on 07/19/2017 8:22:22 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan (https://youtu.be/IYUYya6bPGw)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Joseph Kurtz. Expect nothing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Archdiocese_of_Louisville


14 posted on 07/19/2017 11:39:15 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan (https://youtu.be/IYUYya6bPGw)
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To: Bratch

How did Kuhn “join the US Attorney’s office”

I mean he didn’t just walk in and say “Hi, can I apply for a job?”

No mention of party affiliation or who appointed him... but do I have to ask?


15 posted on 07/21/2017 5:33:20 AM PDT by Mr. K (***THERE IS NO CONSEQUENCE OF REPEALING OBAMACARE THAT IS WORSE THAN OBAMACARE ITSELF***)
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To: Mr. K

Considering his resume, he’s almost assuredly a Democrat.

Probably brought in initially by WJC, then appointed to the top stop by President Obama.


16 posted on 07/21/2017 8:26:53 AM PDT by Bratch ("The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke)
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To: sauropod

Bkmk


17 posted on 07/21/2017 9:16:40 AM PDT by sauropod (I am His and He is Mine)
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