Savannah Hulsey Pointer, FISM News
[elfsight_social_share_buttons id=”1″]
A pro-life activist was detained at his house on Friday during an FBI raid on suspicion of assaulting a volunteer at an abortion clinic in Philadelphia last year.
More than two dozen FBI officers came to Mark Houck’s home and took him into custody just after 7 a.m., according to Mark Houck’s wife Ryan-Marie, who spoke with reporters, as The Washington Times reported. After being allowed inside, agents flooded the house with guns ready to fire and pointed them at Mr. Houck and herself.
Ryan-Marie Houck said the commotion woke their seven children up and saw the traumatizing imagery of FBI agents taking their dad into custody.
According to CBN News, Mrs. Houck said she pleaded with the agents.
“‘Please, I’m going to open the door, but, please, my children are in the home. I have seven babies in the house.’ But they just kept pounding and screaming.” She added that they “had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house.”
“Our staircase is open, so [the kids] were all at the top of the stairs which faces the front door, and I was on the stairs as well, coming down,” Mrs. Houck said. “The kids were all just screaming. It was all just very scary and traumatic.”
An image of the arrest warrant shows that Mr. Houck was charged by the federal court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania with two counts of breaching the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for an “attack of a patient escort.”
According to the FACE Act, it is unlawful to use physical force, threaten, or otherwise interfere with somebody simply because they are a provider of reproductive healthcare. Federal prosecutors asserted that Mr. Houck is suspected of attacking a 72-year-old man who was a volunteer escort at the Philadelphia location of Planned Parenthood on two separate occasions on October 13, 2021.
Mr. Houck allegedly shoved the victim to the ground in the first incident. In the second incident, Mark Houck allegedly challenged the victim verbally before pushing him to the ground once more, necessitating medical assistance for the victim.
However, according to Mark Houck, via his wife, he is a pro-life advocate who would counsel moms on the sidewalk outside the abortion clinic with his 12-year-old son. The alleged victim was a “pro-abortion demonstrator” who reportedly poked at Houck’s son verbally for “weeks and weeks,” saying “crude, inappropriate, and horrible things.” Despite Houck asking the man to stop, “he kept doing it and kind of came into [the son’s] personal space” spouting obscenities about the father, and eventually, Houck shoved the man and he fell back.
Houck was released Friday afternoon.
Pennsylvania State Senator and Republican nominee for Governor Doug Mastriano released a statement about the arrest.
“This show of force carried out by the Biden regime against ordinary Americans is an abuse of power that stands against the fundamental principles on which our country was founded,” Mastriano said in the statement.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, if found guilty, Mr. Houck could get a term of up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fines as high as $350,000.
The Catholic News Network reported that there has been a swell of support for Houck following his arrest, and as of Sunday evening, an online fund drive had raised more than $136,000 to help the family, which was significantly greater than their initial $30,000 goal.