Congress talks about repealing the FACE Act
The seminal 1994 law is essential for discouraging clinic obstructions and harassment. Republicans want to repeal it.
One of the more recent and bigger pieces of news that emerged dealing with abortion was the congressional effort to repeal the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which was passed in 1994 as a way of deterring violence against abortion providers.
The FACE Act is a federal law that protects individuals and facilities involved in reproductive health services from violence, threats, and obstruction. It criminalizes actions intended to prevent people from obtaining or providing reproductive health care, including abortion, and it also protects places of religious worship from similar interference.
This week, the House Judiciary Committee marked up anti-abortion lawmaker Chip Roy's FACE Act Repeal Act of 2025 and voted to advance the bill. The law hasn’t been enforced during Trump’s second Administration since the Department of Justice announced it would no longer enforce it in January. They also pardoned dozens of people who violated it.
Julie Gonen, Chief Legal Officer at the National Abortion Federation, spoke with me about the current status of the FACE Act. She has heard providers say they have had staff who quit because of the violence and harassment.
“Without FACE as a deterrent to that violence, we definitely worry that it will make it so hard for some providers to continue to operate that some might lose staff,” Gonen said. “I don't know that I could say that they would literally close, but it makes it so hard for them to do their jobs that it has an impact on access.”
After the murder of Dr. David Gunn in 1993, President Bill Clinton’s administration responded by pushing for the FACE Act. When Clinton signed the bill, he discussed how the right to free expression didn’t mean that protestors could ignore the rule of law.
The Act had a lasting legacy. It diminished the level of coercion that antiabortion activists could employ to deter abortions from happening. The threat of imprisonment or lawsuits discouraged those methods. I recently saw Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, say in a documentary about Bill Baird that the FACE Act had broken the anti-abortion movement’s back.
These laws, as well as buffer zones, have always been controversial because some have said they violate First Amendment rights of antiabortion protestors.
In 2023-2024, the NAF reported 777 acts of obstruction outside clinics. Gonen connected the people who have been pardoned for FACE Act violations and the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. She’s heard as much from clinic operators.
“It's not just that there's similar behavior,” Gonen said. “In some cases, it's literally the same people.”
Other people within reproductive rights issued statements on the proposed repeal of the FACE Act, including Sean Tipton, Chief Advocacy and Policy Officer for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, who alluded to the recent attack on the Palm Springs Fertility clinic, which a terrorist bombed.
"Less than one month ago, we saw an act of terrorism take place against a fertility clinic for the first time,” Tipton said. “The bombing in Palm Springs should be a signal to lawmakers that now is the time to strengthen protections provided through the FACE Act, which has served as a critical safeguard against extremist intimidation and abuse for decades.
“Proposing the repeal of the FACE Act in the immediate aftermath of a domestic attack on a medical facility is not only tone-deaf; it is dangerously irresponsible.”