The FACE Act, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, dates back to the 1990s and the Bill Clinton administration. It has been utilized by the abortion-defending Biden administration to go after pro-life protesters and demonstrators, including Bevelyn Beatty Williams, 33. She has been sentenced to 41 months in prison, or 3 ½ years, after she was found guilty of violating the federal law outside a New York City abortion clinic.
Williams, a wife and mother, is expected to surrender in October to begin her sentencing but is working with an attorney, Aaron Mysliwiec, to appeal her conviction.
"We view the sentence as one of the issues that should be appealed,” the attorney tells AFN. “There are other places around the country where FACE Act violations have been punished with probation, six months, nine months, including in a case where someone chained themselves to the front of the door. This case didn't involve anything like that."
Williams, who has spoken publicly about the criminal case, has insisted she did not break the law. She describes her confrontation as a peaceful protest in which she was preaching from the Bible.
According to a post-conviction press release from Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, the pro-life protester repeatedly “intimidated and interfered” with people outside the abortion clinic by blocking access to the clinic.
Video footage shows Williams telling the clinic’s director she would “terrorize this place,” the federal prosecutor said, and a clinic volunteer’s hand was crushed when Williams pressed against the patient entrance door.
According to Mysliwiec, who is aware of the footage, there are six to eight hours of video from two days of protests.
“What the videos show is that, for the most part,” he says, “every time that someone tried to get in or leave the Planned Parenthood clinic, and Bev was aware that that was happening, she stepped out of the way and didn't block anybody.”
The video footage shows it was counter-protesters who were technically blocking the clinic entrance from the pro-life protesters, he adds.
Finally, the attorney for Williams says his client and others are victims of a “political prosecution” that began at the Department of Justice after the Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v Wade.
“People should care,” the attorney argues, “about whether the government acts out of a legitimate reason to enforce a law or whether the timing of prosecutions shows that there is a political intent, or political motive, behind them.”
