Before we get started, we wanted to note a couple of things about the writer of the piece we will discuss.
Billy Binion is an associate editor at Reason, which is not exactly a right-wing publication. He’s additionally been published in the San Francisco Chronicle and HuffPost. Binion has also been cited by publications like The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vice, and The Daily Beast.
The writer is now getting a lot of flack from the left after he wrote a piece about Paulette Harlow, 75, who was recently sentenced in Federal Court to serve two years in prison for blacking out an entrance to an abortion clinic in October 2020.
I stand by the fact that this is crazy. Even the most pro-choice person should be able to admit that locking up an old woman—who is reportedly in very poor health—for years because she temporarily blocked an entrance to an abortion clinic is unjust. This should not be partisan. https://t.co/h2IlbnVWzw
— Billy Binion (@billybinion) June 19, 2024
Harlow was part of a group of protestors led by Lauren Handy, who, on October 22, 2020, booked an appointment under a fake name. Prosecutors said that the scene outside was chaotic and led to a nurse spraining an ankle after being hit with a door shoved by Jay Smith, 34. It should be noted that Smith got the lightest sentence because he didn’t go to trial.
The group was charged under the FACE Act (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances), which makes it a federal crime to “engage in “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services.”
Detractors of the law argue that the law isn’t necessary, considering there are already trespassing laws on the books. Binion argued that the “FACE Act arguably further criminalized conduct that was already illegal.”
One of Binion’s concerns was how the case was presented:
But that point is especially relevant in the context of how the Department of Justice (DOJ) under President Joe Biden’s administration pursued this case and related cases. Not content just with the FACE Act, prosecutors paired it with another federal offense: conspiracy against rights, which criminalizes conspiring “to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” who is in the process of exercising a legal or constitutional right.
Prosecuting these offenses in tandem gave the government an opening to secure sentences that were, in this writer’s view, clearly disproportionate to the criminal conduct, regardless of one’s political views. Fifty-seven months—the sentence Handy received—is, for example, the same punishment a federal judge last month handed to a Hawaii man who allegedly defrauded 42 investors out of $1.2 million. There is a disconnect here.
Binion also wrote that he was mortified when Harlow’s sentencing Judge mocked the 75-year-old woman, telling her she should “make every effort to remain alive…because that is part of the tenets of your religion.”
The progressive writer added: “Do even the most avid pro-choicers think this woman should potentially die in prison for this?”
This is what a federal judge said at this 75-year-old woman’s sentencing after her husband asked for mercy based on her poor health. It doesn’t matter how you feel about abortion. I struggle to understand how anyone can think this is acceptable. pic.twitter.com/PGloN0RtXD
— Billy Binion (@billybinion) June 19, 2024
Binion noted that the protestors who lied to get an appointment and kept people from entering violated the law, but “that still doesn’t negate the absurdity of those prison terms. Biden ran for office partly on a promise that he had rethought his tough-on-crime past. It is possible for him to balance that with his pro-choice plank. It appears he has chosen not to.”
The defendants aren’t blameless. Contrary to some viral claims, they’re not going to prison for years for “praying outside an abortion clinic.” They’re going to prison for years for trying to block access to the clinic.
That’s ridiculous enough. It doesn’t require embellishment. pic.twitter.com/Qc4tyz2nzH
— Billy Binion (@billybinion) June 19, 2024
