Eva Edl knows a thing or two about wrongful imprisonment. In the aftermath of World War II, she escaped a communist concentration camp in Yugoslavia before making her way to the freedom promised in the United States.

But now 87 years old, Edl is facing up to six months in prison in her adopted country because she dared to speak out against the systematic slaughter of unborn children. This week, a federal jury in Tennessee convicted Edl and three other pro-life activists for violating the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act, a controversial law that the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have weaponized against the pro-life movement since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

The charges and the conviction stem from a March 5, 2021, incident where Edl and a number of other pro-life activists stood outside the door of an abortion clinic and offered prayers and sang hymns for an end to abortion. The Tuesday convictions are the second set of convictions secured by the Department of Justice over the incident. In January, six other activists were convicted on felony charges stemming from the same incident and face up to 10 and a half years in federal prison.

Here is the text of the relevant portion of the FACE Act, which prohibits anyone who “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services.”

Not Edl, or any of the other activists ever engaged in any violent behavior, they simply sat and stood in the hallway praying and singing. The DOJ claims that because a woman saw the group and chose not to enter the clinic, the group obstructed the entrance in violation of the law.

The prosecution of Edl and her compatriots is the latest act of vengeful retaliation by the Biden administration for the Supreme Court placing the legality of abortion in the hands of voters and their elected representatives. Since the Dobbs ruling, Biden and his Department of Justice have made the persecution of pro-life voices a prosecutorial priority. And in this vile campaign to shut down dissent through politically motivated prosecutions and show trials, Biden has turned the FBI and the Department of Justice into a kind of modern-day Stasi that has more in common with the secret police of communist regimes than the American tradition of law and order.

In September 2022, the FBI stormed the home of Mark Houck, a Catholic father of seven and a pro-life activist, in the early hours of the morning in front of his children. He was charged with violating the FACE Act because he defended his son against a hostile abortion clinic volunteer who was acting aggressively.

While Houck was ultimately acquitted, Edl and others persecuted with the same militant zeal have not been so lucky. Juries in their cases have instead become willful participants in the Biden administration’s political persecution of the pro-life movement, showing a callous contempt for justice by rubber-stamping the DOJ’s bid to lock up an 87-year-old immigrant woman because she prayed in a place they deemed unacceptable.

The FACE Act, it should be noted, also applies to anyone who “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.” It also prohibits property damage to the same.

But while there have been hundreds of documented instances of vandalism and arson against churches and crisis pregnancy centers in the past two years, there have been precious little prosecutions of any culprits. Instead, the DOJ is expending resources to send an 87-year-old immigrant woman to prison because she prayed in a place they deemed unacceptable.

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This weaponization of law enforcement to prosecute political enemies while ignoring similar activities from political friends, often against those same enemies, is the kind of selective enforcement of the law that preludes more widespread persecutions. And it is a taste of what a possible second term for Joe Biden in the White House will bring.

The pro-life movement is not a political movement that can be tolerated. As long as it exists, it will undermine the left’s sacramental zeal for abortion. Thus, Biden’s DOJ has made it a priority to persecute these crusaders for life. If he is reelected, this evil inquisition will only grow. It is incumbent on the voters to put a stop to it and deny him that chance, lest he try to jail another 87-year-old immigrant woman who dared to pray in a place deemed unacceptable.