Last week, a judge ruled that defendants on trial in Washington, D.C., this month for obstructing access to an abortion facility in 2020 cannot claim as their defense that they were acting to protect others from bodily harm.
“A defendant may not don a vigilante’s hood to insert themselves into a situation of their own making and subsequently claim defense of a third person to justify their actions,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a three-page order.
But is the idea that abortion ends the life of another human being “a situation of [a defendant’s] own making”? Or is it a fact? That’s a question Louis C. K. surprisingly explored in his Netflix special “2017,” when he made viral comments about the extreme tactics pro-life activists sometimes use to convince expectant mothers not to pursue the procedure.
“They think babies are being murdered,” he explained in the show’s opening. “What are they supposed to be like? ‘Uh, that’s not cool. I don’t wanna be a dick about it, though. I don’t want to ruin their day as they murder several babies all the time.’”
It’s in that spirit that 10 pro-life activists entered an abortion facility in D.C. in 2020 and, in the words of the Department of Justice (DOJ), “forcefully entered the clinic and set about blockading two clinic doors using their bodies, furniture, chains and ropes.” Accompanying Lauren Handy, the lead defendant in the case, the other nine include Jonathan Darnel of Virginia, Herb Geraghty of Pennsylvania,
