During the trial, jurors will also hear from clinic employees, and patients who had appointments at the clinic the day of the blockade as part of the prosecution’s case, according to court records. A nurse was injured and patients were traumatized, records show.
During the Trump Administration, the FACE Act was “largely ignored,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal historian of the antiabortion movement at the University of California at Davis. But now, Attorney General Merrick Garland has vowed to use it to protect the right to access clinics that provide abortions.
Several potential jurors, however, said they recalled reading about the discovery. Kollar-Kotelly made clear to those jurors that the fetuses will not be part of this case.Still, some potential jurors said they would be swayed. One potential juror who recalled that news story said Thursday that he thought the idea of storing fetuses was “wacko.”
“This is a trial of the decade of the pro-life movement,” Caroline Smith, executive director of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, an antiabortion group thatas its activism director, said at a news conference outside the courthouse on Wednesday.