Locked up: Meet the elderly and infirm women now in prison for pro-life activism

Joan Andrews Bell, Jean Marshall, Heather Idoni, and Paulette Harlow are four pro-life women serving time after being convicted on federal charges for for blockading the inside of an abortion clinic in 2020. / Credit: Chris Bell/Laura Gise/Heather Idoni/Paulette Harlow


CNA Staff, Jun 6, 2024 / 15:45 pm (CNA).

Since she has been in prison, Jean Marshall, 74, a Catholic and pro-life nurse from Massachusetts, told CNA that she’s received over 150 letters of support, which have lifted her spirits.

Marshall and three other women with major health issues spoke with CNA about their imprisonment and their treatment by the justice system under the Biden administration.

Their crime? In an attempt to save the unborn on Oct. 22, 2020, they participated in a human chain, blockading the inside of a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic run by well-known late-term abortionist Dr. Cesare Santangelo.

The women are among 10 protesters who participated in the attempt to save the unborn at the clinic that day who were convicted on federal charges under the controversial Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which has largely been applied to the prosecution of pro-life activists. All of them, including Marshall, are now incarcerated.

Santangelo’s clinic made news in 2022 when the secular pro-life group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) announced that it had obtained the remains of 115 aborted babies from the clinic by a driver for a medical waste company.

Five of those babies appeared to be of late-term gestation and have become the center of a public dispute between federal lawmakers, pro-life groups, and the D.C. medical examiner’s office — which possessed the remains — over the medical examiner’s refusal to conduct an autopsy to determine whether the babies were killed in an illegal partial-birth abortion.

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