Pro-life activist sentenced to almost five years in prison over D.C. clinic blockade

Pro-life activist Lauren Handy was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison on Tuesday for organizing a blockade at an abortion clinic in 2020 in Washington, D.C. 

The Justice Department requested that Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentence Handy for over six years, according to The Washington Examiner. The DOJ further asserted that Handy and other co-defendants planned the crime and advertised it. 

Handy’s attorneys, meanwhile, argued that she had attempted "to rescue preborn children from imminent death at the hands of an abortionist who Ms. Handy believed performed illegal late-term procedures,” and that her protest was peaceful.

She was convicted last year on two charges under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

Handy has a history of protesting abortion at clinics.