Extremists Face the FACE Act

The court ruled that the Hobbs Act — a federal law about obstructing commerce that was the basis for the lawsuit by NOW and two clinics — could not be used against anti-choice groups like Operation Rescue, because clinic violence had no connection to extortion and robbery. But the court's opinion also noted that the the FACE Act was passed after NOW first filed its lawsuit to address the specific issue of clinic violence, bringing the federal law back into headlines.

So just what is the FACE Act? How did it come into being? And how effective has it been?

FACE in Action

In September, 1996, 28 months after Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE), which made obstructing access to reproductive health clinics a federal crime, The New York Times reported that violent protests at clinics had decreased sharply since the passage of the law.

George Wilson and Colin Hudson apparently hadn't gotten the message. On September 20, 1996, they parked two cars in front of the Wisconsin Women's Health Center in Milwaukee, WI, locking themselves in with steel neck braces welded to the inside of the cars. It took firefighters four hours to remove them.

The men were charged with violating the FACE act.

The History of FACE

FACE was first introduced in 1992 to address the growing number of attacks on reproductive health centers, providers, and patients launched by anti-choice extremists bent on imposing their ideology on everyone else, even if it required harassment and intimidation. The bill was reintroduced in 1994 by then-Rep. (now Senator) Charles Schumer (D-NY), Rep. Constance Morella (R-MD), and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA). It was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on May 26, 1994.

FACE's revival was spurred by the murder of Dr. David Gunn in March, 1993 — the first abortion provider to be killed by anti-choice extremists. The statute made it a federal crime to use force, threats of force, physical obstruction, or property damage to prevent a person from obtaining or providing reproductive health services. Those convicted of violating FACE are subject to both fines and imprisonment.

The Impact of FACE

The law seems to be working. Before FACE, in 1993, according to The New York Times, the National Abortion Federation counted 3,429 acts of "violence and disruption" related to reproductive health services. In 1994, the year FACE was passed, that number dropped to 1,987, and in 1995 there were only 1,815. Since then, FACE has been used to protect reproductive health providers and patients around the country and has been instrumental in convicting anti-choice felons in many states.

In April 1997, after two hours of deliberation, a federal jury convicted Hudson and Wilson of two counts each of obstructing access to the clinic and conspiracy to obstruct access. Today Hudson and Wilson are free, but FACE continues to be a vital tool in the fight to protect reproductive health providers and the patients who desperately need them.

More recently, in February 2006, anti-choice extremist Frank Lafayette Bird was sentenced to 10 months in prison and ordered to pay almost $8,000 in restitution. Bird had been convicted under FACE for ramming a delivery van into a Planned Parenthood health center in Houston on March 7, 2003.