“I am astonished that the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals should have a double standard when applying the law,” stated Father Thomas J. Euteneuer, plaintiff in a Florida lawsuit that seeks to apply the logic of the FACE Act against the abortion industry itself.

Father Euteneuer, now the President of Human Life International, was a parish priest in Florida when he and teacher Anne Lotierzo brought the lawsuit against a group of abortionists who harassed, intimidated and obstructed their efforts to provide women with alternatives to abortion from 1998-2000. The lawsuit was dismissed in the Southern District of Florida and was then appealed to the Circuit Court in Atlanta where it was affirmed in part and reversed in part on January 7th.

The one count which was remanded for a hearing involved a death threat against Euteneuer issued by an abortionist who visited a crisis pregnancy center where he served as Chairman. “The good part is that the court gives FACE protection to pro-life people,” said Rick Nelson of the Orlando-based American Liberties Institute, lead counsel for the plaintiffs. However, several other counts in the suit which detailed documented proof of threats of pro-abortion violence were dismissed by the court. “The bad part is that the court ignored the words we wrote in our complaint and ignored all the other cases where FACE was applied against pro-life people outside a facility,” he claimed.

The court insists that FACE can only apply to those who are “in” a facility providing “reproductive services” and not to pro-lifers providing those same services outside a facility. In doing so, the court ignored a whole body of case law where abortionists and abortion mill workers won FACE protection outside abortion facilities: at their homes, on the streets and in public places. “FACE can’t be invoked to protect an abortion-provider from threats of bodily harm in a parking lot and then denied to a pro-life reproductive service provider when someone tries to run her down with a car,” declared Father Euteneuer. “We want to see what the Supreme Court has to say about that arbitrary application of legal protection,” he said, referring to an appeal process that could bring the issue before the high court.