Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) is right: The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act should be repealed.

Roy’s  legislation  would repeal the  1994 law  that “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services.”

While on its face, “reproductive health care services” applies to any place that offers OB/GYN services, the law is  primarily used  to prosecute pro-lifers for actions that are generally state-level misdemeanors, if crimes at all. 

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta has said as much — during  a speech  in December, she said the “Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to women throughout the country, taking away the constitutional right to abortion and increasing the urgency of our work,” which “includ[es] enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.”

In other words, activist bureaucrats use the FACE Act to target pro-lifers.

“Free Americans should never live in fear of their government targeting them because of their beliefs,” Roy  said . “Yet, Biden’s Department of Justice has brazenly weaponized the FACE Act against normal, everyday Americans across the political spectrum, simply because they are pro-life.”

Nor has the Department of Justice even used the law in the way its plain meaning would indicate. For example, the DOJ picked up a state-level misdemeanor charge that had already been tossed against Pennsylvania pro-life father  Mark Houck  and tried, and failed, to use the FACE Act against him. But the context was Houck shoving an  erratic  pro-abortion escort, a man in his 70s, who in no biological way could ever have an abortion.

For how much the Left likes to talk about  criminal justice reform  and showing compassion to criminals, it sure does love the FACE Act, which makes a federal issue out of relatively minor crimes. Here’s the best the DOJ could come up with in its statement on Lauren Handy and four other defendants who were recently convicted under the act. 

“According to the evidence, Handy, Hinshaw, Idoni, and Goodman forcefully entered the clinic and set about blockading two clinic doors using their bodies, furniture, chains and ropes,” the DOJ  news release  stated. “Once the blockade was established, their activities were live-streamed. The evidence also showed that the defendants violated the FACE Act by using a physical obstruction to injure, intimidate and interfere with the clinic’s employees and a patient, because they were providing or obtaining reproductive health services.”

How specifically does a “physical obstruction” “intimidate” someone? Blocking a clinic entrance would be a misdemeanor charge in most cases. 

Had the pro-life activists undertaken their protest in Virginia, absent the FACE Act, they at most would have been charged with a  Class 1 misdemeanor  for “obstructing [the] free passage of others,” a crime that would get them a maximum of  one year  in prison. Instead, the defendants face 11 years in prison.

Roy said the Constitution “separates power between the federal government and the states for a reason, and we ignore that safeguard at our own peril” and the law “is an unconstitutional federal takeover of state police powers.”

The repeal of the FACE Act is an issue worth fighting for. Republicans in Congress should join efforts in both chambers to push for its repeal, and presidential candidates should make it an issue on the campaign trail. 

Justice demands that laws targeting people for their political beliefs be repealed and the issue of minor trespassing and obstruction charges remain at the state and local level.  

Much like Roe v. Wade , the FACE Act has overstayed its welcome.

Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for the College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.