Pro-life father describes horrifying FBI raid to Congress
In his testimony before Congress on Wednesday, pro-life Tennessee father Paul Vaughn described how the FBI violently raided his home and family over his protest of abortion.
In March 2021, Vaughn participated in a peaceful protest with 10 others at Carafem Health Center, an abortion facility in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. Demonstrators prayed and sang hymns, and some blocked the entrance by sitting in front of it. Vaughn was not among those who blocked the door.
The Department of Justice decided to charge Vaughn and other demonstrators with conspiracy against rights and violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which makes it a felony to interfere with abortion. The FBI arrived at his home on the morning of October 5, 2022.
“My house was assaulted, my wife and children were terrorized, and I was kidnapped at gunpoint by four armed men,” Vaughn recounted to the House Judiciary Committee on the Constitution and Limited Government on Wednesday. “I had just sent three of my children to the car so I could take them to school when the house began to shake from a loud banging near the front door. I heard men shouting from my front porch, ‘Open up! FBI!’”
He opened his curtains to see three agents with guns trained on the door. The agents did not identify themselves, he said.
“I later learned at the same time three of my children, ages 12, 14, and 18, were being detained in the side yard on the edge of the woods by a fourth armed man,” continued Vaughn, a father of 11 children. “I was taken without the presentation of a warrant or identification when requested. Make no mistake: this was an armed conflict and I was unarmed. Lethal force was abused to abridge my God-given and constitutionally secured rights.”
Vaughn, who was sentenced to three years probation, was not the only victim of a violent blitzkrieg. On an early September morning in 2022, armed FBI agents stormed the home of Mark Houck, a father of seven, who had also violated the FACE Act by protesting abortion.
“The FACE Act was ostensibly passed because of violence. But as my family knows very well, all it did was give violence the cover of law and place it in the hands of the government,” Vaughn said in his testimony, adding that the FACE Act was passed to “stifle free speech and abuse the rights of Christian conservatives.”
The Biden DOJ has been using the FACE Act to crack down on pro-life Americans. In May, for example, 75-year-old Paulette Harlow was sentenced to two years in prison for violating the FACE Act by participating in a 2020 protest at an abortion center in Washington, DC. After the sentencing, federal judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly taunted the grandmother, who suffers from health issues. The judge told her to “make an effort to remain alive” in prison because that is a “tenet of [Harlow’s] religion.”
In July, a young mother named Bevelyn Beatty Williams was sentenced to three years and five months in prison for violating the FACE Act by protesting outside an abortion facility in June 2020.
DOJ turns the other cheek on pro-abortion terrorism
In the meantime, the Biden administration has been turning a blind eye to domestic terrorists who attack pro-life Americans and centers.
Pro-abortion groups launched a wave of violence immediately after a draft of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked on May 2, 2022. The court ruled that states, not the federal government, should have the power to permit or prohibit abortions. The ruling effectively overturned Roe v. Wade.
Within 24 hours of the draft being leaked, pro-abortion domestic terror groups like Jane’s Revenge and Ruth Sent Us declared “war” on pro-life Americans. They began attacking pregnancy centers — facilities that help women give birth instead of committing feticide — and demanded that all pro-life groups disband within 30 days. Ruth Sent Us instructed activists to storm Catholic churches during Mass and vowed to ”burn the Eucharist.” Jane’s Revenge claimed credit for setting fire to Wisconsin Family Action, a pro-life center in Madison.
Five arrests for 90 violent attacks
There have been at least 90 such attacks on pro-life Americans, according to a report by Catholic Vote. These have included firebombings, arson, destruction, and vandalism. Some pregnancy centers had their locks glued so that staff could not enter the premises. Employees at other centers had their cars keyed. In one instance, an 84-year-old woman was shot while distributing pro-life materials. Two elderly men were badly beaten while protesting outside an abortion facility.
By August 2024, there were only about five reported arrests made in connection with those attacks. The FBI did not issue a public request for information until six months into the wave of violence.
