Pro-life activist sentenced to house arrest in Tennessee for protesting in front of abortion clinic entrance reads powerful statement

On Wednesday, a Tennessee federal judge sentenced four pro-life activists to jail or house arrest for their role in protesting outside the entrance an abortion facility in a Nashville suburb in March 2021. The defendants were found guilty in January of violating the FACE Act. 

Prior to sentencing, defendant Dennis Green of Virginia read a statement to Judge Trauger explaining why he chose to protest outside the Carafem abortion clinic in Mount Juliet. Green was sentenced to six months of house arrest and three years of probation, per the Christian Post. The statement from Green read: 

"We find ourselves in a Nation that has lost its way. A nation that defends and protects the murder of its own children by wicked laws. We live in a nation that seeks to lock away its citizens who won't stand by and let innocent children be dismembered," said Green. "We have become a people repulsive in the sight of God. A people who shake their puny fists in the face of a Holy and righteous God while imagining that they have any degree of moral authority to do so." 

"The One true God has specifically in the Scriptures given His people the command to rescue innocent people who are being taken to the slaughter. As Christians, we are compelled to obey God," he continued. "Throughout history, there have been times when a nation loses its way and turns its back on the weak and vulnerable. Christians have always been at the forefront of rescuing those in danger of unjust persecution and death even when the laws of their day allowed for such oppression and slaughter." 

"I acted to save the lives of innocent babies who were scheduled to be butchered. I use that word very deliberately. This best describes what is happening to these babies. My conscience would not allow me to do otherwise that day. We pray that our nation will once again return to sanity and protect the least of these most innocent image-bearers of God by law. We committed the crime of treating innocent children as if they had value. We are prosecuted because we are politically incorrect but biblically correct. Over the years, legal opinions change but our founding documents remain the same." 

Green went on to quote a piece from the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." 

The defendant continued, "These self-evident truths which are aligned with our Creators revealed law are no longer the basis of law in our Nation's Federal courts." 

"This is not the same country our founders envisioned or created. Politics have taken the place of justice. The Declaration speaks of the unalienable right to life as being on these self-evident truths. If someone has a heartbeat, they are obviously alive. This is self-evident," said Green. "We refused to prop up the charade that killing one's child is a civil or human right. The masses can loudly proclaim the obvious lie that the preborn are not persons but there will always be those who won't play along with the deadly charade. We will act upon the self-evident truth that every child's life is valuable and worth of protection whether they reside in or out of the womb." 

"Men are appointed by God to be protectors of the innocent and vulnerable. A government that sanctions the murder of the weakest and most vulnerable of its members is a government that has abdicated its responsibility to protect its people. And this Nation will answer to God for neglect," he concluded. 

Judge Trauger later handed down a sentence of six months house arrest and three years probation for defendant Green, who escaped prison time. Also sentenced were Coleman Boyd, of Mississippi, Cal Zastrow, of Michigan, and Paul Vaughn, of Tennessee, a father of 11 children whose home was famously raided by the FBI, as per Operation Rescue. 

Vaughn and Boyd were also sentenced to six months of house arrest and three years probation, while Zastrow was sentenced to six months in federal prison, three years probation, and six months of house arrest. 

The Department of Justice accused the pro-life activists of violating the FACE Act and civil rights conspiracy in respect to a protest that occurred in a hallway outside of a Mount Juliet abortion provider on March 5, 2021. On that day, a group of demonstrators convened in the corridor outside the Carafem Health Center Clinic on the second floor of an office building. The group sang hymns, prayed, and encouraged women who arrived at the clinic to refrain from having an abortion.