WASHINGTON — Editor's Note: The video above was published on April 5, 2022.
Two anti-abortion activists will face short jail sentences after trespassing at an Alexandria women's clinic in 2021.
According to court records, Lauren Handy and Terrisa Bukovinac were both sentenced this week. Handy was sentenced to 360 days in jail, with 330 days suspended, meaning she will spend 30 days behind bars. Bukovinac was sentenced to 30 days in jail, with 26 days suspended.
Handy faces separate trespassing charges with eight others stemming from an October 2020 "invasion" of a D.C. reproductive health care clinic.
According to an indictment, prosecutors say Handy called the D.C. clinic pretending to be a woman named “Hazel Jenkins” who needed an abortion and made an appointment for the morning of Oct. 22, 2020. That morning, Handy allegedly approached a clinic employee and said she was Hazel Jenkins and was there for her appointment. When the employee opened the door, the indictment says, Handy and the other co-defendants forced their way into the clinic. In the process they allegedly knocked a clinic employee over, causing her to injure her ankle.
Once inside, the defendants allegedly moved chairs to block the entrance to the clinic’s treatment area and used chains and rope to tie them together.
No trial date has been set for the D.C. case.
Handy is a leader of the group Progressive Anti-Abortion (PAAU) and a self-described "Catholic anarcho mutualist" specializing in reaching young anti-abortion activists. Her bio also says she creates "trans-inclusive spaces within the pro-life movement."
She was at the center of an investigation that led police to find five fetuses inside Handy's home, however, the group claims they took more than 100 fetuses from outside a D.C. clinic.
Bukovanic and Handy sat down for a one-on-one interview with WUSA9 earlier this year to discuss the discovery of the fetuses and a federal indictment against Handy and eight others.
The pair claimed that a truck driver gave them the fetal remains after they told him that they planned to give the fetuses "proper funerals"
“I said, would you get in trouble if we took one of these boxes?” Bukovinac said. “And he said, ‘Well, what would you do with them if you took one? And Lauren said, ‘Well, we would give them a proper burial and a funeral.’ And he thought about it for a second and he said, ‘OK.’”
The women claim they then took the box back to Handy’s apartment, where they found dozens of plastic containers inside. Those containers, they claim, held 115 aborted fetuses.
Curtis Bay Medical Waste Services says it does not transport fetal remains by company policy and also denied that any package was ever handed over to the anti-abortion group.
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