A judge dropped the hammer Tuesday on a fringe anti-abortion activist who infamously blockaded a Washington D.C. abortion clinic in 2020 and allegedly hoarded fetuses at her home, sentencing Lauren Handy to nearly five years in prison.
Handy, 30, was convicted on federal charges last summer alongside nine co-defendants who helped her shut down access to the Washington Surgi-Clinic—a violation of the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
In blocking the clinic’s entrance, Handy and her fellow zealots harassed and directly denied health care access to at least two women who were seeking medical care there.
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In total, Handy was sentenced to spend 57 months behind bars—slightly below the six years, or 72 months, that prosecutors had requested.
The judge who sentenced Handy, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, said she illegally and dangerously decided her personal views took “precedence” over other women’s “human needs,” reported WUSA9.
“Neither you nor any of the other co-conspirators showed any compassion, empathy, toward those two women needing medical care,” Kollar-Kotelly reportedly said ahead of the sentencing.
Handy turned down an offer to address the court before sentencing, the Associated Press reported. Her supporters reportedly cheered for her as she was escorted out of the courtroom.
The charges—and sentences—were unrelated to police’s shocking discovery at Handy’s residence that same year, where they claimed to have found five fetuses kept in a refrigerator at her Capitol Hill home.
Those fetuses, Handy claimed, were among over 100 others she’d recovered from an abortion clinic—with the others having already been buried.
During the clinic blockade, prosecutors said a nurse sprained her ankle as one of Handy’s co-defendants forced his way in, and another another co-defendant was accused of accosting a woman who was having labor pains.
Handy, who made an appointment for herself at the clinic as a way inside, linked arms with her fellow blockaders to keep patients from entering—a chilling scene that was livestreamed to social media for hours before police arrived and arrested the instigators.
The nine co-defendants convicted alongside Handy were Jonathan Darnel, of Virginia; Jay Smith, John Hinshaw and William Goodman, all of New York; Joan Bell, of New Jersey; Paulette Harlow and Jean Marshall, both of Massachusetts; Heather Idoni, of Michigan; and Herb Geraghty, of Pennsylvania. Their sentencing are slated for different times, but all are set to take place by the month’s end.
