Catholic pro-life activist Mark Houck and his wife Ryan-Marie Houck are seeking $4.3 million in damages from the Biden administration, accusing the Justice Department and FBI of targeting him over his anti-abortion views.  As they should - it was wrong, costly and humiliating.

      Mr. Houck is seeking $1.1 million in damages for malicious and retaliatory prosecution, false arrest, abuse of process, and assault, citing the September 2022 raid on his rural Pennsylvania home in front of his wife and seven children by at least a dozen heavily armed FBI agents.

      His wife is suing for $3.25 million for severe emotional and physical distress that culminated in three miscarriages triggered by the “stress of the FBI’s conduct and resulting prosecution,” according to the notice of claim filed with the department’s torts branch.

     “The stress of these events has taken an immense toll on her body — such a significant toll that she had three miscarriages from the stress,” the notice states. “Doctors have now diagnosed her with infertility. So alongside the trauma, paranoia and anxiety she has suffered, she now carries the grief of losing three children and the pain of infertility.”

      Mr. Houck was charged last year with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act for pushing a Planned Parenthood volunteer in October 2021 after the man confronted him twice and yelled at his 12-year-old son as they engaged in sidewalk counseling for a nearby pro-life pregnancy center. 

     Local authorities declined to prosecute. A Philadelphia jury acquitted him of the federal charges in January.  “Upon information and belief, the purpose of the prosecution was to punish and chill speech and religious exercise by Mr. Houck and other pro-life advocates and volunteers for pro-life clinics, which senior leadership at the Department of Justice viewed as ‘predatory,’ funworthy of FACE Act and constitutional protection, and indeed, necessary to punish,” the 28-page claim says. Handling the Houcks’ case is the Institute or Law and Justice at 40 Days for Life, a pro-life group for which Mr. Houck has volunteered since 2007.