Panelists at Pray Vote Stand Summit slam government’s pro-abortion agenda

Mark Houck and other pro-life activists share the severe suffering they have experienced due to the pro-abortion policies of the Biden-Harris administration at the Pray Vote Stand Summit in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024. / Credit: Madalaine Elhabbal/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 5, 2024 / 09:20 am (CNA).

Pennsylvania pro-life advocate Mark Houck joined panelists at the annual Pray Vote Stand Summit in Washington, D.C., on Friday to call attention to the Biden-Harris administration’s attacks against the pro-life movement.

The founder of The King’s Men, a Catholic men’s apostolate, was featured alongside Janet Durig and Catherine Herring as part of a panel titled “Kamala Harris’ Attacks on Life and the Family” during the annual gathering of mostly evangelical Christian conservatives.

Durig is the executive director of Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center, a Washington, D.C-based pro-life resource center that has recently faced repeated attacks of harassment and vandalism. 

The panel pointed out that Harris is known for making inflammatory statements against pro-life pregnancy centers, including offering words of encouragement to Democrat attorneys general nationwide for “taking on, rightly, the crisis pregnancy centers.”

“We don’t force anything on [pregnant women],” Durig said. “Of course, as a Christian pregnancy center, we would want them to choose life, but we don’t force anything on them.

Houck spoke about his own horrifying arrest in which over 25 heavily armed federal agents, including two SWAT team members, raided his home during the early morning hours of Sept. 23, 2022.

Houck described the arrest — which he said took place without a warrant and was witnessed by his wife and children — as “a tyrannical overreach of government” and symbolic of “dictatorship.” 

Looking ahead to the elections in November, Houck told those gathered at the summit that respect for the Constitution must be renewed among elected leaders in order for corrupt targeting of pro-life and pro-family advocates to cease.

“My Fourth Amendment rights [‘the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures’] were violated the day [the FBI] came to my home,” Houck said. “With any new administration, if there’s going to be a change, we need to get rid of the current FBI director, and we need to get rid of the attorney general.” 

Federal prosecutors charged Houck with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act after he was involved in an altercation with an abortion clinic escort who had been harassing his 12-year-old son. After just an hour of deliberation, a jury unanimously found him innocent of the alleged crime, for which he would have been sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Following his arrest, Houck noted that he spent six hours handcuffed to a chair before anyone spoke to him. In total, he was detained for 10 hours before being released on his own recognizance, thereby signaling that he was never considered a true threat. 

“So why the heavy raid?” he asked. “Because they want to humiliate you, intimidate you, and instill fear in you, and make an example of you.”

For her part, Herring shared the story of how she was able to save her daughter’s life thanks to an abortion pill reversal after her husband poisoned her by dissolving chemical abortion pills in her drink.

Had the Biden-Harris administration kept in place previous distribution restrictions on chemical abortion drugs, she said, the incident would not have happened.

Catholic News Agency