• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Catholic Review

Catholic Review

Inspiring the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Menu
  • Home
  • News
        • Local News
        • World News
        • Vatican News
        • Obituaries
        • Featured Video
        • En Español
        • Sports News
        • Official Clergy Assignments
        • Schools News
  • Commentary
        • Contributors
          • Question Corner
          • George Weigel
          • Elizabeth Scalia
          • Michael R. Heinlein
          • Effie Caldarola
          • Guest Commentary
        • CR Columnists
          • Archbishop William E. Lori
          • Rita Buettner
          • Christopher Gunty
          • George Matysek Jr.
          • Mark Viviano
          • Father Joseph Breighner
          • Father Collin Poston
          • Robyn Barberry
          • Hanael Bianchi
          • Amen Columns
  • Entertainment
        • Events
        • Movie & Television Reviews
        • Arts & Culture
        • Books
        • Recipes
  • About Us
        • Contact Us
        • Our History
        • Meet Our Staff
        • Photos to own
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • CR Media platforms
        • Electronic Edition
  • Advertising
  • Shop
        • Purchase Photos
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • Magazine Subscriptions
        • Archdiocesan Directory
  • CR Radio
        • CR Radio
        • Protagonistas de Fe
  • News Tips
  • Subscribe
Pro-life activist Lauren Handy chants slogans against abortion outside the Supreme Court in Washington Dec. 10, 2021. Handy, and two other pro-life activists, were sentenced to federal prison May 14, 2024, for their role in carrying out an Oct. 22, 2020, "lock and block" operation at a District of Columbia abortion clinic they livestreamed over Facebook. (OSV News photo/Sarah Silbiger, Reuters)

Catholic activist sentenced to nearly 5 years in prison for abortion clinic blockade

May 15, 2024
By Kurt Jensen
OSV News
Filed Under: Feature, News, Respect Life, World News

Share
Share on Facebook
Share
Share this
Pin
Pin this
Share
Share on LinkedIn

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Lauren Handy has been sentenced to nearly five years in federal prison — 57 months — for leading a blockade of a Washington abortion clinic on Oct. 22, 2020.

Handy, 30, of Alexandria, Virginia, has had short jail terms in the past for disrupting operations at abortion clinics in Michigan and Virginia. This sentence, her longest yet, was handed down by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly May 14. Justice Department prosecutors had recommended 78 months behind bars.

The judge told Handy that neither she “nor any of the other co-conspirators” had shown compassion or empathy to women at the clinic. “Your views took precedence over, frankly, their human needs,” she said.

Handy declined to make a statement at sentencing. As she was led out, several people in the courtroom shouted, “You’re a hero, Lauren!” They included Monica Miller, who heads the Michigan-based Red Rose Rescue, a pro-life group in which Handy has participated.

Martin Cannon, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, the Chicago-based public interest firm that represented Handy, said they would appeal the sentence.

“They conspired to be peaceful,” Cannon said of Handy and her co-defendants in a prepared statement. “Yet today, the court granted the Biden Department of Justice its wish by sentencing Ms. Handy to 57 months. For her efforts to peacefully protect the lives of innocent preborn human beings, Ms. Handy deserves thanks, not a gut-wrenching prison sentence.”

Handy, a Catholic, was the first of nine participants to be sentenced after a series of trials in 2023 found all guilty of felony conspiracy against rights and violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, for the blockade at Washington Surgi-Clinic in the District of Columbia.

The FACE Act, adopted in 1994, imposes serious penalties on those convicted of “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct” that interferes with access to reproductive health services, typically abortion clinics.

Handy’s blockade, livestreamed on Facebook, involved the use of chains, bike locks and furniture to prevent women from getting past the clinic’s waiting room. The tactics, used often by Operation Rescue in the 1980s, are called a “lock and block” because outside gates are locked and inside doorways are blocked.

Handy gained international attention from an April 2022 press conference where she revealed that she had recovered the corpses of five unborn children in the prior month — late-term fetuses which she had stored in a refrigerator — from a box of 115 fetal bodies obtained from a medical waste truck at Washington Surgi-Clinic.

The corpses were turned over to the district’s medical examiner; no autopsies were performed. The rest received a burial presided over by a Catholic priest.

Handy calls herself the director of activism for Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, or PAAU, a group founded by activist Terrisa Bukovinac in 2021.

According to the federal indictment, Handy made plans with defendant Herb Geraghty, 28, of Pittsburgh. Handy made lodging arrangements for those traveling from out of state and obtained a donation to pay for an Airbnb reservation for herself and Geraghty.

In the pre-sentencing memo, prosecutors also called Handy and defendant Jonathan Darnel, 41, of Arlington, Virginia, “the masterminds who chose the clinic, advertised the event, recruited participants, and planned the crime.”

Read More Respect Life

Nearly one in three conceptions in England and Wales end in abortion, government figures reveal

Planned Parenthood

Judge blocks, for now, Planned Parenthood defunding provision backed by bishops

Report: US abortions continue post-Dobbs rise in part due to telehealth

In retrial, judge acquits man charged in assault on pro-life protester

Supreme Court rules states can deny Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood

British Parliament ‘effectively decriminalizes’ abortion up to birth

Copyright © 2024 OSV News

Print Print

Share
Share on Facebook
Share
Share this
Pin
Pin this
Share
Share on LinkedIn

Primary Sidebar

Kurt Jensen

Click here to view all posts from this author

For the latest news delivered twice a week via email or text message, sign up to receive our free enewsletter.

| MOST POPULAR |

  • Archbishop Lori announces clergy appointments, including pastor and associate pastors

  • superman Movie Review: Superman

  • DUAL ENROLLMENT Double the learning: Dual enrollment provides college credit to high school students

  • Pope prays for conversion of those resisting climate action at new Mass

  • Castel Gandolfo After 12 years, locals welcome pope back to his summer home

| Latest Local News |

Deacon Gary Elliott Dumer Jr., active in men’s ministry, dies

Radio Interview: The music and ministry of Seph Schlueter

Hunt Valley parishioner recalls her former student – a future pope

Father Herman Benedict Czaster, former Curley teacher, dies at 86

Loyola University Maryland graduate ordained Jesuit priest

| Latest World News |

80 years after ‘Trinity,’ Catholic-hosted gathering calls to abolish nuclear weapons

Gaza’s Christian community persevering amid hardship and hope

Nearly one in three conceptions in England and Wales end in abortion, government figures reveal

Caring for others, serving life is the ‘supreme law,’ pope says

Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors’ new president ‘pioneer in his field,’ French lawyer says

| Catholic Review Radio |

CatholicReview · Catholic Review Radio

Footer

Our Vision

Real Life. Real Faith. 

Catholic Review Media communicates the Gospel and its impact on people’s lives in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and beyond.

Our Mission

Catholic Review Media provides intergenerational communications that inform, teach, inspire and engage Catholics and all of good will in the mission of Christ through diverse forms of media.

Contact

Catholic Review
320 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
443-524-3150
mail@CatholicReview.org

 

Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Recent

  • 80 years after ‘Trinity,’ Catholic-hosted gathering calls to abolish nuclear weapons
  • Gaza’s Christian community persevering amid hardship and hope
  • Nearly one in three conceptions in England and Wales end in abortion, government figures reveal
  • The virtue of patriotism
  • Caring for others, serving life is the ‘supreme law,’ pope says
  • Deacon Gary Elliott Dumer Jr., active in men’s ministry, dies
  • Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors’ new president ‘pioneer in his field,’ French lawyer says
  • Radio Interview: The music and ministry of Seph Schlueter
  • Jesus did not ignore those in need, and neither should Christians, pope says

Search

Membership

Catholic Media Assocation

Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association

The Associated Church Press

© 2025 CATHOLIC REVIEW MEDIA, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

en Englishes Spanish
en en