Eva Edl survived a communist concentration camp in Yugoslavia in the late 1940s when she was just ten years old. She later fled to the United States with her family. She went on to become a pro-life activist, and she dedicated herself to helping women outside abortion facilities.
But on Tuesday, 20 August, Edl and six other pro-life activists were found guilty by a Michigan jury for obstructing the entrance to an abortion facility.
During the trial, the US Justice Department asserted that Edl and her fellow Christian activists had, through their actions, forced their religion on others while also denying women’s right to abortion.
The Department applied a 170-year-old conspiracy against rights charge, formally devised to go after the Klu Klux Klan, against the defendants who said their main aim was to “save babies from slaughter” through peaceful protest.
Edl, aged 89, could receive a jail term of up to ten years, and she now faces the prospect of dying in prison.
Other pro-life activists have been jailed in recent months in the US for pro-life activity outside abortion facilities.
SPUC comment
A SPUC spokesperson said: “The targeting of pro-life activists by the judiciary is now commonplace on both sides of the Atlantic, even though instances of pro-abortion lawlessness are far more prevalent and violent.
“Edl has already survived one totalitarian regime, and once again, she is threatened with prison because of her views rather than any obvious crime, certainly not one that merits her dying in jail.
“While the UK and the USA are not Soviet Yugoslavia, the trend toward censorship and the persecution of specific groups is profoundly worrying. Freedoms that traditionally libertarian nations once took for granted are being dismantled in favour of one view of abortion.”
