The trial of a prominent Bucks County antiabortion activist opens amid a political firestorm

The scuffle was brief.

The injuries minor.

And had the altercation that broke out near the intersection of 12th and Locust Streets on Oct. 31, 2021, occurred on almost any other street corner in the city, it might never have landed in federal court.

But because of who was involved — Mark Houck, a prominent Catholic antiabortion activist, and Bruce Love, a Planned Parenthood patient escort volunteer — and where their fracas occurred — just steps from the Elizabeth Blackwell Health Center, a reproductive health clinic that provides abortion services in Center City — the incident is now at the heart of a politically divisive trial that has the antiabortion movement drawing battle lines against the federal government.

Prosecutors on Wednesday began presenting evidence in their case against Houck, 48, who is accused of twice shoving Love, 73, during the 2021 altercation, knocking him to the ground.

He stands charged with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE, Act — a little-known and, until last year, rarely used statute that makes it a felony to injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone providing abortion services. If convicted, Houck could be sentenced to as many as 11 years in prison.

But as they delivered their opening pitch to jurors Wednesday, his lawyers scoffed at the notion that the fracas was worthy of their time. It was Love, they maintained, who instigated the encounter and Houck, they said, had no intention of interfering with the clinic’s operations that day.

If anything, defense lawyer Brian McMonagle told the panel, the case amounted to little more than a misdemeanor assault.

“This is not a state court prosecution for assault,” he said. “They made a federal case out of a shove!”

The bombast inside the courtroom on the trial’s first day was rivaled only by that which has erupted around the case as it made its way to this moment.

Catholic groups and right-wing media have rallied around Houck, calling his prosecution part of what they describe as a Justice Department campaign to target antiabortion activists in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year striking down Roe v. Wade.

A crowdfunding site set up to pay for his legal defense has garnered more than $400,000 in donations.

Even State Sen. Doug Mastriano, the former GOP gubernatorial candidate who lost his election to Josh Shapiro, weighed in from the campaign trail blasting the case last year as part of what he called “the continued weaponization of the FBI and persecution by Joe Biden’s DOJ against ordinary Americans.”

And as jury selection in the case began Tuesday, a crowd of 50 demonstrators — including Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale and conservative commentator Christine Flowers — rallied outside the courthouse, casting the case as a fight for survival of their religious views.

Jim Hutchins, a retired priest from Camden County who was among the crowd, compared Houck — a white former college football player who lives with his wife and seven kids in Kintnersville, to civil rights icon Rosa Parks. He told Catholic News Agency he was praying for justice in the case.

Inside the courthouse, the case has been a big draw — attracting a packed audience of Houck’s supporters for opening statements Wednesday, with many in attendance offering whispered commentary on the testimony from the gallery’s benches.

The snickering and eyerolling grew so pronounced as clinic staffers testified Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Gerald J. Pappert admonished those in the crowd to contain their reactions or risk being thrown out of court.

Critics of the government’s case are right on one point. The Justice Department has brought an increasing number of FACE Act prosecutions over the last year.

Twenty-six people, including Houck, were indicted under the law in 2022, while only four people were charged with violating the statute the year before.

FBI and DOJ officials, however, maintain that the surge in cases is not politically motivated and is simply a response to an increase in violent incidents outside abortion clinics following the Supreme Court decision last year.

» READ MORE: Inside Planned Parenthood

Houck’s case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ashley Nicole Martin told jurors Wednesday, should be decided on what happened at 12th and Locust Streets on Oct. 13, 2021 — not the circus that has erupted around it.

“It’s not about pro-choice. It’s not about pro-life,” she said. “It’s not about politics [or] the First Amendment. It’s about freedom of access, and politics doesn’t come into it.”

Testifying Wednesday, staff at the Blackwell Clinic described Houck as an aggressive and well-known “provocateur” who showed up weekly to harass patients on their way inside. (Houck has described what he does as “street counseling,” offering to pray for women and direct them to antiabortion clinics nearby.)

But as Love tells it, on the day of their encounter, Houck was a clear menace.

Expected to testify Thursday, Love has told authorities that when he saw Houck that day, accompanied by his 12-year-old son, following two patients leaving the clinic, Love approached the women to tell them they didn’t have to listen.

Houck, he says, pushed him away. And a half-hour later, while the two men were once again standing outside the clinic’s doors, Love approached Houck when he says he saw the man confusing women seeking to come inside.

“[Houck] threatened to push me into the street,” Love later wrote in a memo memorializing the incident for the clinic’s staff. “I asked him, ‘Is that a threat?’ He said, ‘Yes.’”

Then, Love said, as soon as he turned his back, Houck pushed him to the ground, causing him to skin his elbow and bruise the palm of his hand.

The problem with that story, defense lawyers insisted Wednesday, is that what limited video evidence there is doesn’t back up Love’s account.

The first scuffle between the two men wasn’t caught on security cameras. And in the second, they say, footage shows Love approaching Houck’s son before the activist struck back.

In court Wednesday, McMonagle accused Love of telling the child: “Your dad is a bad guy. Your dad doesn’t like women.”

“Bruce Love didn’t get pushed because he was providing abortion services,” the lawyer said. “He got pushed because he came out and put himself right next to a 12-year-old boy and said things he shouldn’t have said.”

McMonagle also questioned Faiz Malik, the clinic’s head of security, on why it had only turned over less than two minutes of security footage to the FBI — omitting portions of the first incident that might have proved or disproved Love’s story.

He balked at the staffer’s suggestion that he’d deleted the footage showing events leading up to that first altercation because the incident itself hadn’t been caught on camera. Would he have done the same, McMonagle asked, if this had been a murder?

“This isn’t a murder case,” Malik replied.

McMonagle quipped back: “I know it isn’t. But it is a federal case — and it shouldn’t be.”

Testimony in the case is set to resume Thursday.