PHILADELPHIA — When it comes to pro-life activism, I am a keyboard warrior, albeit a fierce one. I write my messages about abortion and morality and send them out to anyone who will listen. What’s the worst that can happen on the web? I get hate-filled emails telling me I should be sexually assaulted and then see where I’d stand on a “rape exception.” It comes with the territory.
Yes, I’ve also prayed the rosary in front of the Planned Parenthood clinic down the street from my apartment, quietly and without any interaction with clinic escorts. But my body has never been on the line.
That’s why what just happened to Bucks County, Pa., pro-life activist Michael Houck sent a chill down my spine. From where I sit — safely lounging behind my laptop — Houck looks like a very loud canary in an extremely troubling coal mine.
This past week, a SWAT team of federal agents came to Houck’s home wielding an arsenal of assault weapons and arrested him, in front of his family, and over what?
One year ago, he had an altercation outside an abortion clinic where he was praying and protesting. According to statements from Houck and the Department of Justice, the incident involved — at most — some shoving between Houck and a pro-abortion activist who, Houck claims, was whispering pornographic comments into the ears of Hauck’s 12-year-old son with him at the clinic during the peaceful protest. The man fell back, suffered no injuries, and then filed a lawsuit. No injuries, no claim.
The suit was dismissed.
And now the Biden administration is sending in the big guns for a high-profile arrest? Even if you accept the worst-case scenario of Houck’s behavior, an early morning raid of his house nearly a year later still makes no sense. While he’s charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrance Act, there was no evidence that Houck blocked any entrance or that any woman was denied an abortion because of his actions.
Once again, even if there were, what did the body-armor adorned FBI agents fear? That he would brandish his Bible?
The FBI’s Philadelphia office claims the description of 20 to 25 officers on the scene of the arrest “is an overstatement,” but they don’t give a specific number or deny that guns were drawn. All for a husband and father whose attorney had already told the DOJ he would turn himself in if asked.
The DOJ’s action makes sense only if you see that federal law enforcement has become a politicized arm of the Biden administration, which has decided that the right to an abortion is the only thing that allows women to survive in this predatory, patriarchal society. The president and his supporters are rabid advocates for the most extreme policies, including demonizing those of us who respect the life of unborn children. Many of us are people of faith, but even more are people who respect and believe in science, a science that tells us that from the moment of conception, human life exists.
And now that Biden has the Justice Department cops on speed dial, he has decided to use its power in the most dramatic and despicable ways. That SWAT team was not sent out to arrest one family man, surrounded by his seven kids and worried wife, who has done nothing that can actually be prosecuted at the federal or state levels.
Instead, Biden’s DOJ has put all pro-life activists on notice that we have a target on our backs and that our activism is now in the “potential domestic terrorism” category. Remember Biden’s “Red Dawn
speech in Philadelphia a few weeks ago when he labeled “MAGA Republican” Trump supporters a danger to our democracy? That speech with the red-and-black lighting was like a staff meeting on the Death Star.
Did you notice how Biden included among the enemies of the state “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards to an America where there is no right to choose”?
And now it takes a village of stormtroopers to arrest one pro-life dad?
There is a very dangerous trend developing in this country, and it’s not just on social media. Note the rise in anti-Catholic hate crimes with churches being vandalized and opinion pieces in elite journals about “assault rosaries.”
When the armed agents came, Houck announced the presence of his children and pleaded for the federal officers to put down their guns and that he would come peacefully. According to his wife, that’s not what happened. They staged the same sort of assault that the officers in the Elian Gonzalez controversy executed over a generation ago. That, too, was under a Democratic regime.
Philly’s leafy suburbs were the scene of the most recent example of Biden administration thuggery and overreach. Given the heated rhetoric from the commander-in-chief, it will likely not be the last.
