Anti-Abortion Activists Sentenced For Trespassing At Alexandria Women's Clinic

ALEXANDRIA, VA — Six people associated with an anti-abortion organization were sentenced to jail time for trespassing at an Alexandria women's health clinic.

Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising announced six anti-abortion activists had been sentenced in Alexandria court Tuesday. The incident had happened in November 2021 at the Alexandria Women’s Center, a clinic providing abortion and other women's health services.

Two of the activists — Joan Andrews Bell and Lauren Handy — each received a 30-day jail sentence, according to Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. The other four activists — Terrisa Bukovinac, Kristin Turner, Cassidy Shooltz and Jonathan Darnel — received sentences of four days in jail.

In the trespassing incident at the Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, the activists had been handing out materials against abortion and pink roses, according to the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising.

The Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising released statements from four of the people convicted in the Alexandria trespassing incident.

"What you saw today was 6 people from across the political, ideological, and generational spectrum coming together to save babies and as a Catholic and Progressive myself, I am compelled by my deeply held beliefs (religious and political) to put my body between the oppressed and the oppressor," said Handy in a statement.

The Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic did not provide a comment on the sentences to the Washington Post.

Handy and Darnel were also indicted in federal court along with seven others earlier in 2022 for an alleged incident at a women's health clinic in DC in October 2020. According to the indictment, the nine defendants allegedly blocked doors to the clinic to prevent patients from receiving reproductive health services. Prosecutors say the blockage was directed by Handy and filmed live on Facebook by Darnel.

The same day as the indictment, DC police took five fetuses that had been in Handy's DC residence. According to the Washington Post, Handy and Bukovinac claimed to have gotten the fetuses from a medical waste employee outside the DC clinic and buried many of the remains. Bukovinac is the founder and executive director of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, while Handy is the director of activism.

In the DC case, the defendants would each face a sentence up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine up to $350,000 if convicted.