Ron K., who has maintained a peaceful pro-life presence outside a San Francisco Planned Parenthood for over a decade, was arrested and issued a criminal citation on Thursday, April 2 for praying outside the facility. Officers said Ron violated the city’s “shelter-in-place” ordinance and threatened to take him to jail if he did not leave immediately. Ron remained a safe distance away from women and staff entering the abortion mill at all times.
The arresting officer told pro-life activists on the scene that their “constitutional right to protest…has to take a back seat to the health order.” Ron was the only pro-lifer who received a citation, which requires him to appear in court on criminal charges later this month.
Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood continues to operate its clinics, including the one in San Francisco, at full capacity. They insist that surgical and chemical abortions, sex-change hormone therapy, abortion-inducing birth control, “morning-after” abortion pills, and controversial Gardasil vaccines are “essential services.” Because they refuse to shut down during the coronavirus crisis, Planned Parenthood and other abortionists are now competing with hospitals and doctors for scarce personal protective equipment needed to treat patients who desperately need life-saving medical care.
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Outside of Planned Parenthood where they are trying to shut down pro-life activists. https://t.co/CQUOP9n8yg
— Matthew Prewett (@matthewprewett) April 2, 2020
You may remember that Ron K. was violently assaulted outside the same San Francisco abortion mill last year. Life Legal Senior Staff Counsel Allison Aranda, a former prosecutor, urged the police department to take action and even provided officers with the identity and location of the assailant. SFPD did not take any meaningful steps to apprehend the perpetrator.
Life Legal is prepared to file a civil lawsuit, but we have not been able to find the attacker, who has since gone underground. We are working with a private investigator to try to track him down and bring him to justice.
SFPD refused to exercise their authority to protect an elderly man—and now they are threatening him with jail time because he is doing what he has done every “abortion day” for more than ten years—praying for women and offering them life-saving alternatives to abortion.
Life Legal maintains that as long Planned Parenthood is allowed to stay open, women have the right to information about all of their options—not just the one that lines Planned Parenthood’s bloody pockets. Pro-lifers who help direct women to pregnancy centers, abortion reversal, post-abortion counseling, and other life-affirming healthcare are providing essential services and we will continue to defend their right to do so.
Please pray for Ron, as well as the other courageous advocates for babies who are maintaining their pro-life witness during an increasingly hostile time. Pro-aborts are exploiting the current crisis to remove all opposition to their murderous business. We cannot let them get away with this. Life Legal is representing a number of pro-lifers—including our own Mary Riley—who have been spit on, threatened, harassed, and assaulted because they refuse to back down.
LifeNews Note: Alexandra Snyder is the executive director of Life Legal Defense Foundation.
