Seventeen pro-life activists were arrested the morning of Dec. 5 during a peaceful blockade at a Planned Parenthood center in Memphis, Tennessee.
Event organizers described the blockade as the largest act of pro-life civil disobedience in more than three decades, according to a news release from the demonstration’s organizer, Rescue Resurrection, shared via Christian Newswire.
Rescue Resurrection is a coalition aiming to revive the nonviolent “rescue” protests that defined much of the pro-life movement in the 1980s and 1990s. Large-scale rescues effectively ended in 1994 after Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which made blockading an abortion facility a federal crime. In January, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would sharply limit FACE Act prosecutions, which organizers say opened the door for pro-lifers to once again engage in peaceful civil disobedience without the looming threat of federal prison.
Participants blocked entrances to the Memphis facility before officers carried them away. Police had issued repeated warnings before making arrests for trespassing on private property. Videos of the arrests were captured by journalist Ford Fisher.
Among those taken into custody were several well-known figures in the pro-life movement: Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue; Terrisa Bukovinac, founder of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising; Joan Andrews Bell, a longtime activist pardoned in recent years for a FACE Act conviction; William Goodman, a veteran pro-life rescuer and pardoned FACE Act convict; Nathan Berning, the CEO of Let Them Live; and Monica Miller, the Citizens for Pro-Life Society director.
Earlier this year, CatholicVote spoke with Joan Andrews Bell shortly after her release from federal prison, where she reflected on the conviction that drives her to continue pro-life civil disobedience.
“To me, if they’re gonna kill their children in the neighborhood in which I live, within my community, you have to do it over my body,” she said. “Now you can beat me up, drag me away, throw me in prison, but you have to get rid of me first if you’re going to kill their children where I live.”
>> No greater love: Pro-life champion Joan Andrews Bell reflects on her federal imprisonment, Trump’s pardon, and what’s next, in CV exclusive <<
The Memphis location was deliberately chosen for its civil-rights symbolism. Organizers pointed to the city’s history as the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and the home of the National Civil Rights Museum, framing the blockade as an echo of earlier conscience-driven protest movements.
Following her release from custody, Andrews Bell said the event marked the beginning of what organizers hope will be a nationwide revival of rescue-style activism.
“It is the greatest privilege to be a part of the first of many of the Rescue Resurrection movement,” she said, according to the release. “This is what needs to happen to save the babies, and I thank everyone who participated with all my heart.”
Terry described the recent arrest as a necessary extension of pro-life witness.
“This puts teeth in our rhetoric. If abortion is murder, we have to make sacrifices equal to the crime,” he said in the release. “Social tension is necessary to create social change. So please join us in Washington, D.C., at the FDA to ban the murder pill.”
Rescue Resurrection has set its next major event for Jan. 22, 2026, in Washington, D.C., where participants intend to call on the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the approval of abortion-inducing drugs.
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