The recent arrest of former CNN anchor Don Lemon under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act has reignited debate over this controversial 1994 federal statute. A press release from Rescue Resurrection characterizes the FACE Act as “unjust” and calls for its repeal, drawing parallels to the civil rights movement and criticizing federal weaponization of law enforcement. While concerns about federal overreach merit serious consideration, the argument presented contains significant historical inaccuracies and logical inconsistencies that undermine its credibility. This analysis examines three critical flaws in the Rescue Resurrection position: a fundamental misunderstanding of civil rights history, a one-sided critique of law enforcement weaponization, and the troubling implication that disrupting church services constitutes “just” behavior.
The real contention is that the FACE law should not protect abortion clinics or people that murder pre-born children. Abortion should be illegal – period. However, while we have to engage in the current debate with legal abortion and the FACE law, our arguments should be coherent.
Is the FACE Law Unjust? Historical Context Matters
The press release invokes Randall Terry’s claim that “if a law like FACE had existed in the 1960s and was used against Doctor King and the civil rights movement, it is very likely that the Jim Crow laws would’ve remained enforced for many more years.” This comparison fundamentally misrepresents civil rights history and reveals a critical gap in understanding what the movement actually targeted.
The civil rights sit-in movement of the 1960s deliberately targeted private businesses engaged in commercial discrimination—lunch counters, restaurants, department stores, and bus stations—not houses of worship. On February 1, 1960, when four North Carolina A&T students sat at the Greensboro Woolworth’s lunch counter, they were challenging the segregation of a retail establishment that served the general public. These demonstrations spread to F.W. Woolworth stores, S.H. Kress stores, and other commercial venues across the South. The strategic brilliance of the lunch counter sit-ins lay precisely in their economic pressure: segregated businesses lost revenue when protesters occupied seats and white customers stayed away.
Churches, by contrast, served as protected sanctuaries and organizing centers for the civil rights movement, not as targets of protest. Springfield Baptist Church in Greenville became “the unofficial headquarters” of local civil rights activities, where “marches to demonstrate at the lunch counter would start”. First Baptist Church in Montgomery housed mass meetings to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott. When violence erupted, civil rights activists took refuge in churches, as during the May 21, 1961 “siege of First Baptist” when 1,500 Freedom Riders sheltered inside while the Klan surrounded the building. Historical records contain no evidence of civil rights protesters disrupting worship services or blockading church entrances.
The FACE Act explicitly protects both reproductive health facilities and places of religious worship from obstruction, force, and intimidation. Had such legislation existed in the 1960s, it would have protected the very churches that served as civil rights organizing hubs—not hindered the movement. The law’s dual protection recognizes that blocking access to places where constitutional rights are exercised (whether reproductive healthcare or free exercise of religion) constitutes a qualitatively different harm than ordinary trespass. The civil rights movement targeted Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation in public accommodations; protesters challenged these unjust statutes through civil disobedience at commercial establishments. Comparing this to blocking abortion clinic entrances or disrupting church services conflates commercial discrimination with preventing access to constitutionally protected activities.
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Is the FACE Law Unjust? The Weaponization Critique Cuts Both Ways
The Rescue Resurrection statement correctly identifies federal weaponization concerns, with Herb Geraghty noting that “the federal government should have no role in hyper-criminalizing speech-based activity based on the message, viewpoint, or location.” This criticism has merit: the Biden administration prosecuted FACE violations against pro-life activists at rates dramatically higher than enforcement against attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers. Prior to 2025, the FACE Act had never been used by the federal government to protect a house of worship, despite documented attacks on churches.
However, the press release’s solution—complete repeal of FACE—ignores an equally troubling pattern of weaponized non-enforcement at the local level. The same principle that condemns selective federal prosecution must also condemn selective local inaction. Across American cities, we are witnessing widespread abdication of basic law enforcement responsibilities, with local jurisdictions choosing not to enforce laws against theft, assault, drug use, and illegal immigration based on political preferences.
Sanctuary cities exemplify this selective enforcement crisis. As of January 2025, over 1,000 jurisdictions had enacted sanctuary policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Chicago, identified as one of the nation’s largest sanctuary cities, has seen federal authorities publicly criticize local officials for “minimally enforcing—and oftentimes affirmatively thwarting—federal immigration laws,” resulting in “countless criminals being released into Chicago who should have been held for immigration removal”. While sanctuary advocates argue these policies improve community safety by encouraging immigrant cooperation with police, the practical effect is selective nullification of federal law based on local political preferences—precisely the federalism concern raised by FACE critics.
This pattern extends beyond immigration enforcement. Chicago experienced 28,443 violent crimes in 2024, with aggravated assaults reaching a 20-year high of 8,039 incidents. Yet arrests occurred in only one-in-seven violent crimes, and the arrest rate has trended downward for two decades. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s tenure saw felony charges dropped against 29.9% of defendants compared to 19.4% under her predecessor. While violent crime decreased in the first half of 2025, the persistent gap between crime rates and prosecution rates suggests systemic underenforcement. Research indicates that reform prosecutors do not necessarily increase crime rates, but the public perception of unenforced laws erodes confidence in the rule of law itself.
San Francisco presents another case study in selective enforcement. Despite Mayor Daniel Lurie’s 2026 initiatives to address the fentanyl crisis through the RESET Center and expedited contracting for homeless services, the city continues to struggle with visible drug use and property crime. San Francisco’s 2024 data showed that while overall crime declined, shoplifting remained 20% higher than 2019 levels. Statewide, California shoplifting increased 28% from 2019 to 2023, with most increases concentrated in four counties including San Francisco’s surrounding areas. These statistics reflect what critics describe as a prosecutorial culture that prioritizes “compassion” over accountability, allowing low-level crimes to proliferate with minimal consequences.
The fundamental question is one of principled consistency: If federal selective enforcement of FACE constitutes weaponization, does local selective non-enforcement of theft, assault, and immigration laws also constitute weaponization? Both scenarios involve law enforcement agencies making politically motivated decisions about which laws to prioritize and which to ignore. Both undermine the rule of law by treating statutory obligations as optional based on ideological preferences.
Pro-life advocates who critique federal overreach while simultaneously defending peaceful civil disobedience at abortion facilities must acknowledge the mirror image: progressive jurisdictions that critique federal immigration enforcement while defending their own refusal to prosecute certain crimes. The solution cannot be selective principled stands that apply only when one’s own political coalition faces prosecution. A consistent position would recognize that reasonable laws require reasonable and fair enforcement at all levels of government—federal, state, and local. The problem is not federal involvement per se, but rather the politicization of enforcement decisions across all jurisdictions.
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Is the FACE Law Unjust? The Church Disruption Precedent
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Rescue Resurrection statement is what it implicitly endorses by labeling FACE “unjust.” If the statute that criminalizes disrupting church services is unjust, the logical corollary is that disrupting church services must be just—or at least not sufficiently harmful to warrant federal protection.
The January 18, 2026 disruption of Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota demonstrates precisely why houses of worship require legal protection beyond ordinary trespass statutes. Approximately three dozen protesters entered the church during Sunday service, walking to the pulpit and loudly chanting “ICE out,” forcing the service to end prematurely and traumatizing families, youth, and children. The protesters targeted Cities Church because Pastor David Easterwood serves as acting director of the local ICE field office. Among those arrested under FACE was former CNN anchor Don Lemon, whose involvement drew national attention.
This incident violated fundamental principles of religious liberty and private property rights. Under U.S. law, churches are private property even when open to the public for worship. The Supreme Court held in Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner (1972) that private property does not become a public forum merely by being accessible to the public, and Connecticut courts applied this principle directly to churches in State v. Steinmann (1990). Speech protected on public sidewalks outside a church does not enjoy the same protection inside a sanctuary. The First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause protects the right to engage in private worship without disruption, and the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC (2012) affirmed the autonomy of religious institutions in matters of internal governance.
The FACE Act’s inclusion of churches recognizes that disrupting worship services inflicts unique harm beyond mere trespass. A worship service is a sacred assembly where congregants exercise their constitutional right to free exercise of religion. When protesters invade that space to advance a political message—regardless of the message’s content—they are not engaging in protected speech but rather hijacking a private religious gathering for purposes antithetical to its mission. The Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention accurately characterized the Cities Church disruption as “unacceptable trauma,” noting that protesters shouted “insults and accusations at youth, children, and families”.
Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board, observed that “what occurred was not protest; it was lawless harassment,” stating unequivocally that “no cause—political or otherwise—justifies the desecration of a sacred space or the intimidation and trauma inflicted on families gathered peacefully in the house of God”. This principle applies regardless of one’s position on immigration enforcement. Even those who vehemently oppose ICE policies should recognize that disrupting a church service attended by families with children crosses a bright line between legitimate protest and harassment.
The First Amendment protects robust protest activity near churches: peaceful picketing on public sidewalks, distributing leaflets on public property, quiet demonstrations that do not interfere with access or worship, and verbal criticism of the church or its beliefs from a distance. What the Constitution does not protect is entering the building without permission, using amplified sound to drown out worship, threatening or intimidating congregants, or refusing to leave when asked. These actions transform protected speech into unlawful conduct.
If the FACE Act is “unjust” because it federalizes penalties for such disruptions, the implication is that local trespass laws provide adequate protection. But this argument fails on its face. Local prosecutors in politically progressive jurisdictions have demonstrated unwillingness to aggressively prosecute activists whose causes align with local political leadership. The same selective enforcement critique that applies to federal FACE prosecutions applies equally to local decisions not to prosecute church disruptions. Without federal civil rights protections, houses of worship in sanctuary cities could face repeated disruptions with minimal legal consequences, precisely because local authorities sympathize with the protesters’ political objectives.
The pro-life movement has long maintained that abortion constitutes an evil so grave that peaceful civil disobedience to save lives is morally justified. This position has intellectual coherence and historical precedent.
A principled approach would acknowledge that the FACE Act serves a legitimate function—protecting access to both reproductive healthcare facilities and houses of worship from physical obstruction—while critiquing its discriminatory enforcement. The law itself is not unjust; the Biden administration’s selective application was unjust. The remedy is equal enforcement, not repeal. The Pro-Life movement has as its goal the most serious of all goals – the preservation of innocent human life.
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Is the FACE Law Unjust? The Path Forward
The debate over the FACE Act reveals deeper tensions in American civic life about the proper balance between federal and local authority, the limits of civil disobedience, and the weaponization of prosecutorial discretion. These tensions cannot be resolved through simplistic calls for repeal, but rather require principled commitment to consistent standards across political divides.
First, the historical record must be accurately represented. The civil rights movement targeted commercial discrimination, not churches. Using Dr. King’s legacy to justify either blocking abortion clinics or disrupting church services distorts history and dishonors those who fought Jim Crow segregation. Civil disobedience against unjust laws that mandate discrimination differs fundamentally from physical obstruction of access to constitutionally protected activities.
Second, critiques of law enforcement weaponization must apply consistently. Federal selective prosecution of pro-life activists under FACE is indefensible, and so is local selective non-prosecution of theft, assault, and immigration violations. The rule of law requires that duly enacted statutes be enforced fairly and consistently, regardless of whether enforcement authority resides at the federal, state, or local level. Conservatives cannot credibly condemn federal weaponization while defending local nullification, nor can progressives do the inverse.
Third, the FACE Act’s protection of churches serves a vital constitutional function that pro-life advocates should celebrate, not demonize. Religious liberty depends on protecting houses of worship from hostile takeovers by political activists. The Cities Church disruption demonstrated that without such protections, politically motivated mobs can prevent believers from exercising their First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion. Pro-life Christians should be the first to defend these protections, not the first to call for their repeal.
The Rescue Resurrection press release concludes by calling on “the left and the right, progressives and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans to accomplish one simple goal: the complete repeal of FACE from federal law.” This bipartisan appeal fails to recognize that both abortion facilities and churches merit protection from violent obstruction. Violence being the key restriction. The better solution is bipartisan commitment to equal enforcement—prosecuting violations regardless of the perpetrator’s political affiliation or ideological motivation.
Reasonable laws require reasonable and fair political leaders and judges at all levels of government. The FACE Act is such a reasonable law. It protects both sides of the abortion debate from violence and obstruction. It recognizes that preventing access to constitutionally protected activities—whether obtaining reproductive healthcare or attending church services—inflicts harm beyond ordinary trespass. The law’s failure lies not in its existence but in its enforcement. Federal prosecutors who aggressively pursue pro-life blockaders while ignoring attacks on pregnancy centers betray the statute’s purpose. So too do local prosecutors who refuse to charge church disruptors because they sympathize with the protesters’ politics.
The question “Is FACE Law Unjust?” demands a nuanced answer: The statute itself embodies just principles of equal protection and religious liberty. The selective enforcement of those principles by partisan prosecutors—federal and local alike—constitutes the real injustice. Repealing FACE would not solve this problem; it would simply remove legal protections from vulnerable institutions and leave enforcement entirely to the same local prosecutors who have already demonstrated unwillingness to protect pro-life pregnancy centers and churches from violent attacks.
A better path forward involves three concrete reforms: (1) Congressional oversight ensuring the Department of Justice prosecutes FACE violations evenhandedly, regardless of whether the victim is an abortion facility or a church; (2) federal civil rights investigations into local jurisdictions that systematically refuse to prosecute crimes based on political considerations; and (3) transparent reporting requirements showing enforcement statistics broken down by violation type, perpetrator ideology, and victim category.
These reforms would preserve the FACE Act’s legitimate protective functions while addressing the weaponization concerns that motivated the Rescue Resurrection statement. They would also establish a precedent for demanding consistent enforcement across all levels of government—a principle that serves the rule of law far better than selective appeals to federalism when facing prosecution and selective appeals to federal intervention when local authorities refuse to act.
The pro-life movement’s greatest strength has always been its moral consistency: the recognition that every human life possesses inherent dignity from conception to natural death. Extending that consistency to legal principles—insisting on equal enforcement of laws protecting both the unborn and the freedom to worship—would strengthen rather than weaken the movement’s credibility. Calling the FACE Act “unjust” while tolerating disruptions of church services undermines that moral authority and hands opponents a powerful counter-narrative.
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Conclusion: Is the FACE Law Unjust? The Answer Is No
The FACE Act is not unjust. Selective enforcement of the FACE Act is unjust. Local refusal to prosecute crimes based on political preferences is unjust. Disrupting church services to advance political agendas is unjust. These injustices share a common root: the weaponization of prosecutorial discretion to advance partisan objectives rather than to serve equal justice under law.
History, properly understood, teaches that the civil rights movement succeeded by targeting actual injustice—laws mandating racial segregation—not by disrupting worship or blocking access to constitutionally protected activities. The movement’s leaders recognized that means must be proportionate to ends, and that civil disobedience carries moral weight only when directed against unjust laws, not against individuals exercising legitimate rights. While abortion remains legal, the fight to educate people and politicians that the murder of innocent humans is not a legitimate right, it is murder.
The path forward requires intellectual honesty about historical facts, principled consistency in critiquing law enforcement weaponization regardless of which side benefits, and unwavering defense of religious liberty even when churches are led by people with whom we disagree politically. These commitments demand more nuance than a simple call to repeal FACE. They require the difficult work of insisting on equal enforcement, documenting disparate treatment, and building bipartisan coalitions to demand that prosecutors serve justice rather than ideology.
Pro-life advocates who engage in peaceful civil disobedience at abortion facilities do so to save lives, accepting legal consequences as part of bearing witness to the dignity of the unborn. This witness loses credibility when coupled with demands that federal laws protecting churches and abortion facilities alike be repealed. A more powerful witness would insist on equal enforcement: prosecute those who block abortion clinic entrances and prosecute those who disrupt church services, regardless of political affiliation. This standard serves both justice and religious liberty—values that should unite rather than divide Americans across the political spectrum.
The question is not whether FACE is unjust, but whether we possess the moral courage to demand its just application. That courage requires condemning federal overreach and local underenforcement with equal vigor, defending churches and clinics from violent obstruction with equal resolve, and insisting that the rule of law prevails over the rule of political expediency. Only such principled consistency can restore public confidence in a justice system currently damaged by the very weaponization that all sides claim to oppose.
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