Prominent Bucks County antiabortion activist not guilty of charges in altercation with Planned Parenthood volunteer

A prominent Catholic antiabortion activist accused of shoving a Planned Parenthood volunteer was acquitted Monday of charges that he instigated the encounter to intimidate workers at the organization’s Center City clinic.

It took a jury roughly an hour to find Mark Houck, 49, of Kintnersville, not guilty of violations of the FACE Act — a federal law that makes it a crime to injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone providing abortion services.

Houck and his supporters had denounced the case as an “abusive prosecution” by a U.S. Justice Department they say has overzealously used the law to prosecute abortion opponents within the last year.

As the jury’s foreman read out the panel’s decision, Houck clenched his jaw, then bowed his head, his hands over his eyes in relief. Moments before, the courtroom packed with family members and supporters had been chanting together in prayer.

“I’m overjoyed, blessed, just so grateful,” Houck said, as he left the courtroom surrounded by supporters — many of them clutching prayer books or rosary beads. “I’m just so grateful for that justice was served here today.”

Prosecutors declined to comment.

The verdict came after a five-day trial in which tensions surrounding the case were as inflamed outside the courtroom as within, heightened by feelings surrounding the nation’s abortion debate since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade last year.

Right-wing media had rallied around Houck’s defense, citing his prosecution as another instance of what they described as the Biden administration’s using the Justice Department against those with opposing political views. The Chicago-based Catholic public-interest law firm the Thomas More Society sent attorneys to take up his case.

Supporters packed the courtroom each day of the trial, attended prayer rallies, and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his legal defense.

And Houck’s arrest last year by armed FBI agents at his Bucks County home drew harsh criticism from Republican candidates on the campaign trail, including failed GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano.

The bureau maintained the tactics agents deployed that day were standard protocol for making arrests in the field. And Justice Department officials have attributed the rise in prosecutions — 26 last year, compared with four the year before — to a rise in violent incidents outside abortion clinics nationwide after the Supreme Court decision.

“This case has been nothing but an intimidation tactic by the Biden Justice Department,” said Peter Breen, the Thomas More Society attorney who represented Houck in court along with local defense lawyer Brian McMonagle. “This matter never should have drawn the attention of the Department of Justice. And our hope here is that message was sent to Washington, D.C. to stop this harassment.”

He said he hoped Houck and his family would be invited to testify before Congress at committee hearings led by House Republicans investigating alleged political bias in the Justice Department.

For his part, Houck never denied that he twice shoved Bruce Love, a then-72-year-old volunteer patient escort at the Elizabeth Blackwell Health Center during their 2021 altercation.

Houck, a speaker, author, cofounder of the Catholic ministry the King’s Men, was a regular presence every Wednesday outside the Planned Parenthood-run facility, offering what he describes as street counseling to women seeking services there.

Government witnesses, including many of the clinic’s staffers, described him as an aggressive “provocateur.” Love said he’d only been trying to protect to women leaving the clinic as Houck approached them with pamphlets when their first altercation occurred.

Houck, he said, shoved him away.

“I was pretty upset,” Love told the jury. “This is not something that has ever happened to me in my life. I’m not a person who gets into fights.”

A second tussle occurred moments later, after Love approached Houck and his 12-year-old son, who had joined him that day, on the street corner near the clinic. Nearby security cameras caught the incident on tape, showing the two men aggressively exchanging words before Houck shoved Love again, sending the older man reeling to the ground, where he scraped his elbow and bruised his palms.

“This trial isn’t about viewpoints. It’s not about people’s views on reproductive health,” said Sanjay Patel, a trial attorney with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division dispatched from Washington to assist local prosecutors with the case, during closing arguments Friday. “It’s about an aggressive man who used his size and his youth to shove a grandfather because the clinic provides services he opposes.”

While prosecutors painted the tussle as an attempt to intimidate Love for his work, the defense insisted Houck had only been responding to abusive comments Love had made toward his son.

Testifying last week, Houck’s son, Mark Jr., told jurors Love had approached him and his father cursing and shouting that they should “go home and masturbate” or focus their attention on pedophile priests. Houck recalled the man telling his son that his father “didn’t care about women.”

Love repeatedly denied speaking to Houck’s son during his own stint on the witness stand.

“Mark’s goal wasn’t to interfere with a man who was providing reproductive health services,” McMonagle, the defense lawyer, said during his final pitch to the jury. “He was trying to protect a 12-year-old boy who only wanted to pray and be with his dad.”

As he left the courthouse Monday, son by his side and free from the charges that could have sent him to prison for up to 11 years, Houck said he’d be back at his usual spot outside the clinic next Wednesday.

“Two hundred percent I’m going back,” he said. “I’m a little wiser, but I’m more bold than ever.”