Years in the making, GOP bills against 'weaponization,' medicalized gender transition head to floor

Two of the more strident culture warriors among congressional Republicans scored years-in-the-making wins this week, with their bills heading to the House floor as the Supreme Court prepares to rule in related cases on abortion and youth gender medicine.

The House Judiciary Committee approved the FACE Act Repeal Act (HR 589) by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Protect Children's Innocence Act (HR 3492) by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on party-line votes in a heated markup session Tuesday, three weeks after the committee abruptly ended the bills' originally scheduled markup with no action.

It heartened pro-life activists prosecuted by the Obama and Biden administrations for nonviolent demonstrations and opponents of hormonal and surgical interventions for gender-confused children, two of whom were arrested for silent protests in Brussels last week.

"Outstanding progress in the House," Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah and sponsor of HR 589's companion bill, wrote on X. Both chambers must "get this unfair, unjust law off the books. Permanently." 

The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act was "always constitutionally suspect" even without selective enforcement and "every state has laws against trespass & violence" to sanction protesters, Alliance Defending Freedom President Kristen Waggoner wrote.

Though President Trump's Justice Department "deweaponized" the FACE Act by sharply limiting prosecutions, and Trump pardoned 23 abortion sit-in convicts, Thomas More Society General Counsel Andrew Bath said "the law’s tentacles" empower Democratic attorneys general against "peaceful pro-life advocates" like its clients.

They include Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising leader Lauren Handy, "death camp survivor" Eva Edl, "loving moms and dads, grandparents, priests, and nonviolent people of faith" who faced "harsher charges and sentences than convicted drug dealers and fraudsters," society head of litigation Peter Breen said.

While the society said "Bath has been working directly with Congressional leaders" and briefing staff on the necessity of repeal and unconstitutionality of the law, a spokesperson told Just the News, "We intend to try and set up more meetings on the Hill" but had worked only with Roy, who has also sought to preserve evidence in allegedly illegal D.C. abortions.

SCOTUS rulings are due by month's end on whether states can block Planned Parenthood, the single largest abortion provider in America, from receiving Medicaid funds and ban so-called gender affirming care for minors. The House GOP budget bill banned Medicaid funding for abortion providers and medicalized gender interventions for minors.

One GOP lawmaker: Mend it, don't end it

A 31-year-old law that purportedly protects both abortion clinics and pro-life pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) from unconstitutional protests, the FACE Act was used exclusively against pro-life activists until after Republicans took the House in the 2022 midterm elections, according to a letter to committee members from pro-life groups.

The turning point seems to have been nationwide vandalism of PRCs with explicit threats of violence, including one just blocks from the Supreme Court, following the leaked Dobbs opinion ending federal abortion rights in May 2022.

Then-Rep. Ted Budd, R-N.C., led 20 colleagues in demanding then-Attorney General Merrick Garland investigate and prosecute such vandals, and Budd and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., asked the same of their own state's then-AG Josh Stein.

At a FACE Act hearing two years ago, House Judiciary Republicans invoked the just-released Durham report on the FBI's Russia collusion to bolster their claims that the Biden administration was selectively prosecuting pro-life activists on trumped-up charges while ignoring more than 100 post-leak "firebombing" and vandalism incidents against pro-life groups.

In his second introduction of the bill earlier this year, Roy said his office obtained data that showed 205 of 211 (97%) FACE Act prosecutions through 2024 were against pro-life activists. 

Roy said at the markup the Biden administration used the law 92% against protesters at abortion clinics versus 8% against protesters at PRCs, the Washington Examiner reported. He said 24% of prosecutions in the FACE Act's history were in the Biden administration, The Washington Times reported.

“If more people have been convicted of attacking abortion clinics than pregnancy centers, it’s because vastly more people are attacking abortion clinics,” the committee's top Democrat Jamie Raskin of Maryland retorted, then cited a strange example: a fertility clinic suicide bomber who allegedly declared "war on pro-lifers."

"The only people in America who are asking for this legislation to be repealed are terrorists," said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., portraying all pro-life activists as violent. California Rep. Tom McClintock was the only Republican to oppose the bill, urging revision to make the law "even-handed," but left before the vote, the Examiner said.

CatholicVote Director of Government Affairs Tom McClusky claimed "both Democratic and Republican administrations avoided using" the 1994 law, "questioning its constitutionality,” until President Obama first used it against pro-lifers and President Biden "ultra-weaponized" it.

Asked how that squares with a 2009 article claiming the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations prosecuted about 10 and two FACE Act cases a year, respectively, McClusky cited his 2011 remarks that DOJ, "Hill and real world lawyers on both sides of the aisle" told him about a "gentleman's agreement" not to enforce it because "everyone understood the law was unconstitutional."

Pro-life news organization Live Action also claims DOJ started using the FACE Act against pro-life activists under President Obama, but cites a 2011 NPR article that claims the Bush administration filed one case and quotes one activist who says the Clinton administration prosecuted him. 

Roy's office didn't respond to a request for more granular statistics.

Narrower than previous versions

Congresswoman Greene's HR 3492 would codify President Trump's executive order prohibiting "chemical and surgical mutilation of children" by criminalizing the provision of surgery, puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors with the intent of changing their bodies "to correspond to a sex that differs from their biological sex," with several exceptions.

It's less expansive than her similar legislation from previous Congresses, which made foreign practitioners "deportable and inadmissible" to the U.S. 

Greene promised the Conservative Political Action Conference two years ago to reintroduce her bill in the newly GOP-controlled House, blaming the internet and social media for confusing children. Public support already tilted toward her, with a fall 2022 survey finding even a narrow majority of Democrats opposed medicalized transitions for minors.

The firebrand Georgian offered yet another bill this year to block Medicaid from paying for transition drugs and surgeries for minors.

Gays Against Groomers cheered the bill for blocking "interstate trafficking of minors" for gender-confusion medical interventions.