I started and grew 40 Days for Life into the biggest grassroots pro-life movement in our history, and this article explains how federal power was used against ordinary citizens who only prayed and served, what a federal review uncovered, and why accountability and legal fixes are needed now.
I helped organize thousands of leaders and hundreds of thousands of volunteers who gathered in peaceful prayer outside abortion facilities across the country and beyond. Those families, students, pastors and counselors were doing what citizens do when they believe in a cause. Instead of protection, too many of them found themselves targeted by the Justice Department.
The Trump Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group published an 882-page report based on internal records that confirmed a disturbing pattern. It found the DOJ coordinating with groups on the other side to monitor and prosecute pro-life Americans, building secret files and treating peaceful activity like criminal behavior. That level of coordination between federal prosecutors and advocacy groups should trouble every citizen.
The report also lays out a chilling scorecard of how the DOJ treated protesters. When pro-life Americans were charged, the department sought sentences more than twice as long as those pushed against people who firebombed and vandalized pregnancy centers and churches. For every pro-abortion offender charged, fifteen pro-life people faced prosecution, and a grandmother praying her rosary on a sidewalk could be treated like a greater threat than an arsonist smashing a window.
After the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade leaked in May 2022, a militant group called Jane’s Revenge promised a “summer of rage” and then launched attacks. Ninety-six pregnancy resource centers and 393 Catholic churches were firebombed, vandalized or threatened. Statues of Our Lady were beheaded and doors were set on fire during Mass, while violent graffiti like “If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you” appeared on the walls of community nonprofits offering free support.
The Justice Department was warned about this wave of violence and disruption and did little that mattered. Meanwhile, it invested energy into pursuing peaceful pro-life demonstrators, treating volunteer counselors and prayerful citizens as legal targets rather than victims in need of protection. That mismatch of priorities reveals a deeper tilt inside powerful institutions.
One stark example was the dawn raid on the home of volunteer Mark Houck, where a SWAT team arrived with assault weapons drawn in front of his wife and seven children. He was later acquitted thanks to strong legal defense, and the presiding judge observed the law was being “stretched a little thin.” That case showed how broad and aggressive enforcement can become when prosecutors treat conscience-driven actions as criminal conspiracies.
The report exposed a task force inside the Civil Rights Division run by Sanjay Patel that compiled secret dossiers on pro-life advocates who had not been charged with crimes. Some of those files included photographs of the targets’ children, a chilling breach of privacy. Patel and several prosecutors involved were fired, and some convictions were later pardoned, but the damage to families and trust in justice remains.
I’ve stood in the rain with Christians praying outside clinics, watched pregnancy center directors sleep in shifts to guard their doors, and prayed with pastors whose sanctuaries were defaced. Those personal moments make the policy stakes real: this was not abstract politics, it was fear in people’s lives. The federal response from Washington amplified that fear instead of calming it.
Stopping prosecutions and replacing officials is only the start. The Biden Justice Department did not invent contempt for praying Christians and pregnancy centers, it exposed contempt already embedded in institutions that train our lawyers, reporters and prosecutors. A new administration can halt the abuse, but reshaping the culture in law schools and newsrooms will take longer and require sustained attention.
Congress should open a serious investigation into coordination between federal prosecutors and pro-abortion advocacy groups and pursue reforms that prevent weaponizing the Justice Department against citizens exercising their faith and free expression. The FACE Act and other statutes that were used in these prosecutions deserve a hard review to ensure they protect people rather than silence them.
The people pulled into courtrooms and jails for standing quietly on sidewalks deserve their records cleared and their reputations restored, and officials who used the Justice Department as a bludgeon should face accountability. This is about more than politics; it is about whether citizens can trust the law to be evenhanded. America should protect peaceful conviction, not criminalize it.
The volunteers who kept praying and serving did not give up on their neighbors or on the nation, even when federal power turned against them. Now is the moment for lawmakers, courts and citizens to insist that justice serve the people, that laws protect the vulnerable, and that no administration uses the federal machinery to punish those who simply defend human life.
