[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]
At what point do pro-choice narratives become so encoded in a federal judge’s head that when it comes time to sentence an anti-abortion protester to prison — in this case, an ailing 75-year-old woman who expressed doubts about surviving prison life — that same judge will quip, “Make an effort to remain alive because that’s a “tenet of your religion.”
The sentencing of Paulette Harlow, 75, a Catholic, by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly — a graduate of the Catholic University of America and presumably a Catholic, albeit of the cafeteria variety — to two years in prison for violating the Face Act, was an act of judicial cruelty.
The Face Act was signed into law by President Clinton in 1994 and prohibits “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services.” The law was probably inspired by Hilary Clinton, the behind-the-scenes feminist abortionist First Lady who did a lot to influence her husband when it came to legislation about women.
Given Judge Kotelly’s insulting remarks to Harlow, I wondered: what does this judge look like? Would she have severe smile or frown lines? Would there be a demonic “sparkle” in her eyes? When I located a photograph of the judge, what I saw was a hair style common among older women — Kollar-Kotelly is 81 — and facial features that suggested underlying conflicting tension that reminded me somehow of the face of Judge Juan Merehan.
Harlow was among nine pro-life activists charged by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia with “civil rights conspiracy and Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act violations.”
According to an AP assessment, the October 2020 invasion of the Washington Surgi-Clinic, included “the use of force and physical obstruction to execute the blockade.” While it’s true that the protesters entered the clinic by force, once inside they began to sing hymns and pray the rosary. The “occupation” was also live-streamed on Facebook.
Yet this wasn’t just any abortion clinic, but a notorious late-term abortion clinic run by Dr. Cesare Santangelo, a doctor who has been accused of conducting late-term abortions. Santangelo, in fact, was secretly recorded by a woman from an anti-abortion group, Live Action, in 2013 in which the pregnant woman asked Santangelo what he would do if an attempted abortion failed and resulted in the birth of a live baby.
“I mean technically, you know, legally, we would be obligated to help it, you know, survive,” Santagelo says on the video.
The woman then gets Santagelo to admit that if the baby survived, “Then we would do things. We would, we would not help it.”
Harlow says that she and her fellow anti-abortion activists “were there to intervene, to put our lives on the line, to intervene…between the death of the child and the abortionist, peacefully…” Harlow traced her pro-life stance to a photograph of an 18-week-old fetus published in Life magazine in 1965.
But Judge Kotelly was apparently not bothered by the fact that the abortion clinic in question was a controversial late-term operation that had come under wide scrutiny, such as in 2022 when a secular pro-life group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) announced that it had obtained the remains of 115 aborted babies — five of which appeared to be the result of illegal partial birth abortions — from the clinic by a medical waste company driver.
A truly fair judge would have considered this fact when sentencing Harlow. While “extremism begets extremism” is not the best philosophical approach when it comes to righting a grievous wrong, Kotelly should have taken into account the list of abuses associated with Santagelo’s clinic when she sentenced Harlow and the other activists involved in the October 2020 occupation.
Yet there doesn’t seem to be anything “nuanced” about Kotelly, who has sentenced several January 6 participants and rioters with commentary (and quips) that play into the Democrat fantasy of a “planned insurrection.”
In March, she sentenced Clifford Mackrell, 23, to 27 months in prison for his participation in the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack, stating:
“We have an election coming,” Kollar-Kotelly said. “Unless democracy is protected, it will be destroyed.”
Kotelly then mentioned the Supreme Court’s decision after the 2000 election between George Bush and Al Gore.
“Many people were very unhappy with (that ruling),” she said. “But there was a peaceful transfer of power. Nobody engaged in an insurrection.”
Her chronic use of the word “insurrection” tells us where this judge is coming from: Not from the “bosom of Abraham,” but from the bosom of Biden-Harris, Merrick Garland and the whole gang of DOJ lawfare warlords who will do anything to stay in power.
Lauren Handy, 30, of Virginia, was sentenced to 57 months in prison by Kotelly despite please from her Thomas More Society lawyer that his client had been sentenced “for engaging in what Lauren vowed to make a nonviolent, peaceful demonstration against abortion.”
“Ms. Handy, who directed the invasion and blockade of the Washington Surgi-clinic on Oct. 22, 2020, arrived for an appointment she had made at the clinic under a false name, prosecutors said. That was when she and her co-defendants pushed their way into the waiting room and blocked its doors with their bodies, furniture, chains and ropes,” The New York Times reported in May 2024.
Before sentencing Paulette Harlow, a wheelchair-bound woman, to 24 months in prison, Judge Kollar-Kotelly forbade Harlow from attending weekly Mass while she was under house arrest. Harlow’s sister, Jean Marshall, 74, a Catholic pro-life activist from Massachusetts, was also sentenced by the Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton appointed judge to 24 months in prison.
What does all this tell us in the end? It tells us — to quote Catholic Vote President Brian Burch — “that President Biden and his administration have been merciless in their efforts to punish pro-life Americans.”
“It is one thing to hold an alternative view on abortion. It is entirely different when the president of the United States turns our independent law enforcement agencies into a pro-abortion police force,” Burch added.