Last week, 22 senators issued a statement calling for an end to Democrats’ weaponization of the legal system, calling out “activist attorneys” and courts for targeting pro-life Americans. One particularly egregious case was that of Mark Houck, a Catholic pro-life activist arrested in 2022 and acquitted in 2023. Last month, he filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) for $4.3 million.
Houck’s arrest made national headlines when 20 heavily armed federal, state, and local law enforcement agents apprehended him on Sept. 23, 2022, at his home in Kintnersville, Pennsylvania, in front of his wife and seven children. Months earlier, he had agreed to turn himself in peacefully in response to federal charges.
Houck was outside the Blackwell abortion facility in Philadelphia on Oct. 13, 2021, when he shoved a Planned Parenthood escort away from his 12-year-old son after repeated attempts to deter the man’s aggressive, verbal harassment. The incident, caught on camera, portrays Planned Parenthood volunteer Bruce Love walking down the street away from the facility’s entrance to intimidate and harass Houck and his son.
The local police and district attorney rejected Love’s attempts to bring Houck to court, and a lawsuit filed against Houck was dismissed by a Philadelphia municipal court. But the Department of Justice picked it up, indicting Houck on charges of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, threatening a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison. In January 2023, a jury acquitted Houck in under an hour.
Houck is a
