WASHINGTON — A federal judge sentenced the leader of an anti-abortion group to more than four years in prison Tuesday for orchestrating a conspiracy to violate patients' rights by forcibly blockading a D.C. clinic in 2020.
Lauren Handy, 30, and nine co-defendants were indicted on felony charges of conspiracy against rights and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for forcing their way into the Washington Surgi-Clinic on F Street under a false name and then using chains, bike locks, furniture and their bodies to prevent patients from entering the facility and police from removing them. One co-defendant, Jay Smith, pleaded guilty to violating the FACE Act and was sentenced to 10 months in prison. The remaining eight – Johnathan Darnel, Herb Geraghty, Joan Andrews Bell, William Goodman, Paulette Harlow, Jean Marshall, John Hinshaw and Heather Idoni – were convicted on both counts in a series of trials in federal court last year.
Handy made international headlines in 2022 when WUSA9 reported she had fetal remains in her Capitol Hill residence. No charges were ever filed in connection with the remains, which police said appeared to have been aborted according to D.C. law, and a judge barred Handy and her co-defendants from entering evidence about them at trial.
Handy and at least some of her co-defendants claimed they were motivated to blockade the Surgi-Clinic specifically because they believed “infanticide” was occurring. No evidence was presented at trial to support that belief and a WUSA9 review of five years of Department of Health inspection reports conducted following Handy’s arrest in 2022 determined inspectors have consistently found nothing to cite at the clinic.
Defense attorney Martin Cannon, of the anti-abortion law firm The Thomas Moore Society, argued Handy deserved a downward variance from the 63-78 months she faced under her federal sentencing guidelines. Cannon listed Handy’s history of charitable works, including time spent in Haiti, and said she was s “peaceful, passive” person committed to nonviolence.
“I am here to argue that his is a person of good faith who is acting out of conscience,” Cannon said.
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Kollar-Kotelly, who was nominated to the federal bench by former President Bill Clinton, agreed with a slight downward variance and sentenced Handy to 57 months, or roughly 4.75 years, in prison. Kollar-Kotelly said Americans like Handy had been protesting abortion for the better part of a decade – and that there “may be nothing more American than that protest – but rejected comparisons made by her lawyer to civil rights icons Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.
“The law does not protect violent and obstructive conduct, nor should it,” Kollar-Kotelly said. “That’s what you’re being punished for today.”
Kollar-Kotelly said she was also struck by how Handy and her co-defendants treated two women who they blocked from entering the clinic that day.
“Neither you nor any of the other co-conspirators showed any compassion, empathy, toward those two women needing medical care,” Kollar-Kotelly said. “Your views took precedence over, frankly, their human needs.”
One of those patients testified at trial about how she collapsed on the floor in severe pain while her husband begged the blockaders to let her into the clinic. Surveillance video entered as evidence showed the second woman climbing through a window into a clinic staff area to escape from the blockaders. And a member of the clinic staff was knocked down and suffered a severe ankle sprain as the group of anti-abortion activists forced their way inside the reception area.
As part of her sentence, Handy will have to serve three years of supervised release upon completing her prison term. While under supervision, Kollar-Kotelly ordered her not to enter or come within 1,000 feet of a reproductive health clinic unless authorized by probation.
Prior to her arrest, Handy worked as the director of activism for a group called Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising that has been involved in other protests outside clinics in the D.C. area as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. In their sentencing memo, prosecutors noted her lengthy history of blockades at clinics – including two in Virginia and Michigan that resulted in jail time – and said she joined with another co-defendant, Jonathan Darnel, in a scheme to make history by organizing the first “lock-and-block rescue” in 25 years.
“They were the masterminds who chose the clinic, advertised the event, recruited participants, and planned the crime,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sanjay Patel and John Crabb wrote in their sentencing memo.
Prosecutors were also seeking years in prison for Handy’s co-defendants who were scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Following their convictions last year, Kollar-Kotelly ordered all of the defendants immediately taken into custody except for one, Harlow, who has medical issues. All will receive credit for approximately nine months already spent in detention.
Handy’s attorneys asked the judge to recommend she be placed at FCI Danbury, a low-security facility in Connecticut.