Lauren Handy, a anti-abortion activist, has been arrested as five fetuses were found inside her home.
Gatekeepers News reports that Lauren, a director of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising group, was arrested on Wednesday outside her Washington D.C. apartment.
She was indicted the same day on federal charges alleging that she was part of a group of nine who blocked access to a Washington Surgi-Clinic reproductive health center and streaming it on Facebook in October 2020.
Local WUSA9, which first reported the discovery, said Handy told a reporter that ‘people will freak out when they hear’ what detectives found inside her house.
Police on Thursday said the five fetuses appeared to have been aborted in accordance with D.C. law.
“There doesn’t appear to be anything criminal about that — except for how they got into that house,” said Ashan M. Benedict, DC Police Executive Assistant Chief of Police.
In the indictment, prosecutors said Handy had called the Washington Surgi-Clinic pretending to be a prospective patient named ‘Hazel Jenkins’ and scheduling an appointment.
The indictment named the other eight suspects as: Jonathan Darnel, 40, of Virginia, Jay Smith, 32, of New York, Paula Harlow, 73, of Massachusetts, Jean Marshall, 72, of Massachusetts, John Hinshaw, 67, of New York, Heather Idoni, 61, of Michigan, William Goodman, 52, of Michigan, and Joan Bell, 73, of New Jersey.
Five of them chained themselves together on chairs to block the treatment area as others blocked the employee entrance to stop other patients from coming inside, the indictment alleges.
Another suspect blocked people from coming into the waiting room, prosecutors charge.
Handy and the eight others were charged with conspiracy against rights and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
The federal law, more commonly known as the FACE Act, prohibits physically obstructing or using the threat of force to intimidate or interfere with a person seeking reproductive health services.
Handy and Goodman also face charges for resisting arrest at an abortion clinic in Michigan in 2019.
