House Concurrent Resolution 54

A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION CALLING UPON THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS TO PASS H.R. 589, 119TH CONGRESS (2025), AND S. 223, 119TH CONGRESS (2025), REPEALING THE FACE (FREEDOM OF ACCESS TO CLINIC ENTRANCES) ACT AND COMMENDING PRESIDENT TRUMP FOR ISSUING PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS TO 23 PRO-LIFE AMERICANS UNJUSTLY CONVICTED THEREUNDER.

WHEREAS, the FACE Act (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994), 18 USC Section 248, was enacted by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994 to prohibit individuals from interfering with access to so-called "reproductive health services," which include both abortion facilities and pregnancy resource centers; and

WHEREAS, first-time FACE Act offenders face a penalty of up to 12 months in jail and a $15,000 fine, and repeat offenders can receive up to three years of jail time and $25,000 in fines; and

WHEREAS, according to World magazine, since a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Center case in early May 2022, "The DOJ began pairing standard FACE Act indictments with charges of 'conspiracy against rights,'" which carries penalties of up to a "10-year prison sentence and its own fines"; and

WHEREAS, according to a report updated November 12, 2024, by Catholic Vote, since the Dobbs' leak, at least 95 pregnancy resource centers and pro-life groups have been attacked and vandalized; and

WHEREAS, according to the Family Research Council, in the year following that leak, at least 38 "churches across the country have been firebombed, smashed, ransacked or vandalized with pro-abortion graffiti and threatening messages," and there were at least 23 "'other incidents' in which pro-abortion protesters were arrested or pro-life individuals were physically attacked"; and

WHEREAS, according to an October 20, 2022, Fox News Digital report, although radical left wing pro-abortion group Jane's Revenge had claimed credit for more than a dozen attacks on churches or pregnancy resource centers, "not a single member of the underground group has been arrested"; and

WHEREAS, according to a May 12, 2022, report by the Wisconsin State Journal, Jane's Revenge proclaimed it was at "war" with pro-life groups, demanded "the disbanding of all anti-choice establishments" and said the first attack was "only a warning"; and

WHEREAS, despite the numerous serious attacks and threats upon the pro-life community, according to Catholic Vote's data updated November 11, 2024, there have been only five reported arrests in connection with the attacks on the pro-life community; and

WHEREAS, despite the numerous serious attacks and threats against the pro-life community, according to an October 11, 2024, article revised November 11, 2024, by the Alliance Defending Freedom, "After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the Biden administration began a campaign to promote abortion nationwide" and the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) "brought at least 26 charges against pro-life individuals under the FACE Act in 2022," but brought zero prosecutions against "abortion activists who obstructed or vandalized pro-life pregnancy centers in the wake of the Dobbs' decision that year"; and

WHEREAS, according to the aforementioned Alliance Defending Freedom article, in October 2021, devout Christian Mark Houck was praying with his son outside a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, abortion clinic when a Planned Parenthood escort repeatedly "got in the face of Houck and his son" and made vulgar comments, leading Houck to push the Planned Parenthood escort to get him away from his son; and

WHEREAS, the aforementioned Alliance Defending Freedom article further stated that state and local authorities brought no charges against Houck, but the Biden Department of Justice did so and, despite Houck's offer to turn himself in, "The FBI sent 'twenty heavily armed federal agents' to Houck's house in the early morning hours, pointed at least five guns at him, his wife, and his children, and then arrested him," yet it took a federal jury less than three hours to find Houck not guilty of the charges brought against him; and

WHEREAS, in another example of the Biden Administration's persecution of the pro-life community, according to his written testimony submitted December 18, 2024, to a subcommittee of the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, and further, as reported by the National Catholic Register, father of 11 and small business owner, Paul Vaughn, was arrested in the early morning hours at his home at gunpoint by an FBI swat team, to the horror of his wife and seven of his children who were home, all for merely praying outside an abortion clinic, after which Vaughn was subjected to a lengthy prosecution and federal trial and sentenced to three years of supervised release, even though the lead negotiator for the local police department, who Vaughn interacted with on the day of the alleged "crime," testified on his behalf at the trial and video evidence showed Vaughn had not blocked any facility entrances; and

WHEREAS, by his own public account, as broadcast by the American Family Association (AFA), emergency room physician, pastor, and father of 13, Dr. Coleman Boyd was put under felony indictment under the FACE Act, paired with felony conspiracy charges, forced to give up his firearms and placed under travel restrictions blocking international mission work, as if he were a terrorist, and, according to an article in Zenit Magazine, "sentenced to six months of house arrest, five years of probation, and a $110,000 fine," before losing his job as a result of his sentencing; and

WHEREAS, according to an article in The Daily Signal, 89-year-old concentration camp survivor, Eva Edl, faced over a decade in prison and received three years of probation for her nonviolent protest of the same destruction of human life she saw in her youth at a communist death camp; and

WHEREAS, according to an article by the National Catholic Register, in yet another example of the Biden administration's abuse of power using the FACE Act, Bevelyn Beatty Williams, a 33-year-old pro-life activist, was sentenced to three and one-half years in prison after her protest at an abortion facility, with the judge mercilessly taking her away from her daughter, a toddler, for that child's formative years; and

WHEREAS, President Trump has already pardoned or granted clemency to the aforementioned 23 pro-life activists, thereby signaling his opposition to the FACE Act's many abuses; and

WHEREAS, this long train of abuses under the FACE Act has demonstrated that the FACE Act has been weaponized and made a tool of injustice and violation of law-abiding Americans' constitutional rights, and has further demonstrated that the FACE Act has been so irrevocably tainted by the Biden Administration's politicized prosecutions and is so unavoidably subject to prosecutorial abuse that United States Senator Mike Lee and Representative Chip Roy have introduced H.R. 589 and S. 223 to repeal the FACE Act, in support of which Senator Lee stated that "the Biden DOJ has weaponized this constitutionally suspect law against pro-life sidewalk counselors while failing to protect pregnancy centers and churches from violent attacks,"; and

WHEREAS, despite the FBI's and DOJ's blatant abuses of the FACE Act and the scandalously historic number of pardons and clemencies the Biden administration issued, including of his own disgraced son, admitted felon Hunter Biden, whom he falsely promised he would never pardon, President Biden provided no relief to the pro-life Americans unjustly persecuted by his administration for exercising their rights to free speech and religious liberty in opposition to abortion:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI, THE SENATE CONCURRING THEREIN, That we call upon the United States Congress to forthwith pass, and President Donald J. Trump to speedily sign, H.R. 589, 119th Congress (2025), and S. 223, 119th Congress (2025), repealing the FACE Act.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That we call upon Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and Mississippi Congressmen Trent Kelly, Bennie Thompson, Michael Guest and Mike Ezell to join Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker in cosponsoring the bills to repeal the FACE Act in their respective chambers.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That we commend President Donald J. Trump for pardoning or granting clemency to 23 Americans unjustly convicted under the FACE Act for exercising their constitutional rights to protest at abortion clinics.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That copies of this resolution be furnished to President Donald J. Trump, Majority Leader John Thune of the U.S. Senate, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Senator Roger Wicker, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, Congressman Trent Kelly, Congressman Bennie G. Thompson, Congressman Michael Guest, Congressman Mike Ezell, the Office of the U.S. Attorney General, and to the members of the Capitol Press Corps.