WASHINGTON — Just days after being sentenced to more than four years in prison for orchestrating the invasion and blockade of a D.C. clinic, anti-abortion activist Lauren Handy was named in a federal civil suit this week for allegedly blocking the entrance to a Planned Parenthood facility in Ohio in 2021.
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division filed a civil action under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act this week a jury trial and monetary damages against two anti-abortion groups and seven individuals accused of obstructing operations at two clinics in Northeastern Ohio on June 4 and 5, 2021. The defendants named in the suit are:
- Citizens for a Pro-Life Society
- Red Rose Rescue
- Laura Gies
- Lauren Handy
- Clara McDonald
- Monica Miller
- Christopher Moscinski
- Jay Smith
- Audrey Whipple
According to the suit, which was filed in the Northern District of Ohio, the defendants unlawfully blocked operations at the Northeast Ohio Women’s Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, on June 4, 2021, and at Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio’s Bedford Heights Surgery Center in Bedford Heights, Ohio, the next day.
The Justice Department says several of the defendants entered the Cuyahoga Falls clinic under false pretenses by claiming to be seeking reproductive health services – the same tactic Handy attempted to use to enter a D.C. clinic in October 2020 – and then occupied the clinic waiting room and refused to leave. The defendants allegedly sat or lay on the floor and had to be carried out of the facility and into police cars by officers. According to the DOJ, at least five patients did not make their appointments that day.
The next day, a group of defendants including Handy and Smith allegedly trespassed at the Bedford Heights clinic and caused the facility to be shut down for nearly the entire day – affecting 24 patients, including nine who had surgeries that had to be canceled. According to the complaint, when police arrived and told the defendants to leave Handy “sprawled her body out on the ground in front of BHSC’s entrance and refused to move.” Police said they initially hoped they could get the defendants to leave simply by ordering to, but they “refused because they wanted to get arrested.”
In a press release, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke noted the suit comes on the 30th anniversary of the passage of the FACE Act in 1994.
“Congress passed the FACE Act 30 years ago this month in response to acts of violence, threats of violence and physical obstruction at reproductive health clinics in our country,” Clarke said. “The Civil Rights Division is committed to enforcing federal law to protect the rights of those who seek and those who provide access to reproductive health services.”
Several of the defendants, including Handy, Smith and Moscinski, have a history of previous arrests for anti-abortion activities in the D.C. area. Handy served jail time after being convicted of trespassing at clinics in Virginia and Maryland and was sentenced last week to 57 months, or approximately 4.75 years, in prison on federal felony charges of conspiracy against rights and violating the FACE Act for orchestrating the invasion and blockade of the Washington Surgi-Clinic in October 2020. Smith, who also goes by the name “Juanito Pichardo,” pleaded guilty to violating the FACE Act in connection with that blockade and was sentenced to 10 months in prison.
Handy also 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.
Moscinski, a Catholic priest, was most recently convicted of trespassing at another D.C. clinic in May 2020 and was originally sentenced in March 2022 to 120 days in jail, all suspended, and two years of probation. A D.C. Superior Court judge found he broke the terms of that probation last year when he was convicted and sentenced to six months in federal prison for violating the FACE Act when he used locks and chains to block the entrance to a Planned Parenthood facility in Hempstead, New York. In March, Moscinski was ordered to serve 100 days of his original sentence in the D.C. case behind bars.
On Thursday, the anti-abortion law firm the Thomas More Society, which represented Handy in her federal case in D.C., decried the civil suit as an attempt to “weaponize the FACE Act” to penalize peaceful protest.
“Once again, the Biden DOJ is reaching back years, to before the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs, to drudge up something to use to prosecute peaceful pro-lifers,” Steve Crampton, a Thomas More Society attorney, said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for the Thomas More Society said Crampton and Cannon would be representing Handy in the Ohio case as well.
The DOJ’s civil suit in Ohio seeks civil penalties of $20,516 against all defendants and a higher penalty of $30,868 for defendants like Handy who have previously been convicted of violating the FACE Act. The DOJ Is also seeking damages in the amount of $5,000 for each person aggrieved by the defendants’ actions, which could amount to more than $100,000 for patients at the Bedford Heights clinic alone.