WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — One of the FACE Act prisoners has explained why she took part in the traditional pro-life rescue that might lead to 11 years of imprisonment.
Pro-life advocate Jean Marshall told LifeSiteNews in a written statement that she and her sister, Paulette Harlow, took part in a rescue at the late-term abortion center in Washington, D.C. to prevent the slaughter of innocent children “as if the life of the Preborn Christ Child was at stake.” (Full statement below.)
Marshall said that the eight or nine months in prison she and fellow activists have suffered since being convicted last fall of violating the FACE Act in the 2022 D.C. rescue have placed them in solidarity with the unborn, “hidden from the world.”
LifeSiteNews has obtained a letter Marshall wrote to her fellow Third Order Secular Franciscans. Marshall said in the letter that her pro-life work drew inspiration from the peaceful St. Francis as well as the early Christian martyrs who broke Roman law to rescue infants exposed to die.
The texts of her statement and letter follow below.
Statement of Jean Marshall to LifeSiteNews
We went to the abortion killing place in peaceful response to Proverbs 24:11, to “rescue those being dragged to their death.”
We went as if the life of the Preborn Christ Child was at stake because our Lord said, “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for Me” (Matthew 25:40).
Lastly, we went in civil disobedience of the egregious FACE [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances] Act which made it a federal felony offense to do a peaceful sit-in at an abortuary.
Despite this non-violent act, we were put into jail before sentencing for eight and nine months, and not unlike our brothers and sisters in the womb, we have been in solidarity with them hidden from the world.
It is my co-defendant, Joan Bell, who says, “I have always believed that one of the most powerful things we can do as pro-lifers is to go to the abortion killing centers and visibly pray for our little brothers and sisters as they are brought to slaughter. It makes more appealing our plea for God to be with us upon our own death if we do likewise for Jesus’ abandoned children.”
Our rights end where another’s life begins; it is where our rights and theirs begin, at conception.
Letter from Jean Marshall from the Alexandria Detention Center to her fellow Third Order Secular Franciscans
My co-defendants and I went in peace and good conscience to co-defend preborn children in imminent danger of being dragged to their death on Oct 22, 2020. My sister (Paulette Harlow) and I knew as Secular Franciscans that St. Francis took the gospel literally and so, lived it. In this sense of living the gospel, St. Francis gives flesh to the Word of God too.
As Catholics we know that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is the Son of God and the Word of God and that the Word was made flesh when He became the preborn Christ Child in Mary’s tabernacle womb.
Matthew 25:40 says, “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me,” and verse 45 says, “What you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.”
Proverbs 24:10-12 reads, “If you remain indifferent in time of adversity your strength will depart from you. Rescue those who are being dragged to their death and from those tottering to their execution withdraw not. If you say, ‘I know not this man!’ does he who tests hearts perceive it? he who guards your life knows it, and he will perceive it and he will repay each one according to his deeds.”
READ: ‘We’re saving lives’: Pro-life rescuers turn prison time into yet another ministry
We are born in God’s plan to live at this particular chapter in our country’s history (and) to live the gospel. According to our Franciscan rule, we are “to be at the forefront of promoting social justice.”
When put in the perspective of our Christian ancestors, should we do less than they did? Christians in the 1st century of the Roman Empire broke an unjust law not to rescue babies left outside the gate of a city to die from exposure or to be eaten by wild animals. Not a single Jew would have been saved from the Nazis if good Christians had not broken the law to save them. Governors and sheriffs in this country refused to obey the Fugitive Slave Act, a law that said runaway slaves had to return to their slave masters.
Though not a Franciscan, Christian civil rights leader and civil disobedience activist Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said that “We are morally obliged to obey just laws, but we are morally obliged to disobey unjust laws.” (“An unjust law is no law,” said St. Augustine.) Both St. Francis and MLK were men of peace.
In closing, I would like to quote my co-defendant, Joan Bell, who says, “I have always believed that one of the most powerful things we can do as pro-lifers is to go to the abortion killing centers and visibly pray for our brothers and sisters as they are brought to slaughter. It makes more appealing our plea for God to be with us upon our own death, if we do likewise for Jesus’ abandoned babies.”
LifeSiteNews extensive coverage of the D.C. Face Act trials be found here.
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