Amidst pro-life infighting over Donald Trump’s stance on abortion, one woman facing prison time for her anti-abortion activism is urging her fellow pro-lifers to back the former president.
Eva Edl, an 89-year-old survivor of a communist concentration camp who was recently found guilty of charges related to praying outside of an abortion clinic, said that denouncing Trump over his views on abortion is not the best way forward for the movement.
“I do not think that pro-life groups should denounce Trump, but they should rather try to educate him on the value of human life,” Edl told The Daily Wire on Wednesday.
“How can we expect Trump to know this truth when most pastors have not taught this biblical fact to their own congregation, and were silent throughout the years while pro-abortion voices devalued human life?” she said. “He needs to know that God created human life in His own image.”
Edl is one of many pro-life activists recently found guilty of engaging in a conspiracy against rights and violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for peacefully praying outside an abortion clinic. She survived a World War II-era death camp before escaping to the United States, and has since devoted her life to protecting unborn babies.
Her Wednesday remarks refer to controversy over Trump’s stance on pro-life laws, such as Florida’s law protecting unborn babies once they have a detectable heartbeat, which Trump has criticized as too strict. While Trump has a strong pro-life record — his Supreme Court nominees helped overturn Roe v. Wade, and he is staunchly against late term abortions — he has repeatedly said as of late that abortion laws should be left up to the states. He also pledged last week to be “great for women and their reproductive rights,” comments that prompted some activists to suggest that pro-life voters should not support Trump in November.
Edl says she has “some dear friends who feel it would violate their conscience to vote for Trump,” and said they will “abstain from voting altogether.” But she says her “conscience” wouldn’t allow her to do the same.
“It seems to me that we are one election away from communist rule in our country,” she reflected. “We are given only two choices: two candidates in the Communist Democrat Party or two candidates in the compromised Republican Party.”
“I believe that, if I do not vote, I actually end up voting for the communist Democrat Party by default,” Edl continued. “This would trouble my conscience greatly.”
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil,” Edl said, quoting a line often attributed to German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed for his opposition to Adolf Hitler. “God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Justice Department has utilized the FACE Act to targe pro-life activists for trying to stop abortions from taking place.
The FACE Act prohibits use of force, obstruction, or property damage intended to interfere with “reproductive health care services.” The law theoretically protects houses of worship and pro-life pregnancy resource centers, but the Biden-Harris Justice Department has overwhelmingly used it to prosecute pro-life activists like Edl.
The president’s Republican critics, among them Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Texas Rep. Chip Roy, have accused the Biden-Harris administration and its Justice Department of weaponizing the FACE Act, particularly given the hundreds of pro-abortion attacks on pregnancy centers and Catholic churches since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion showing Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned.
Justice Department data obtained by Roy shows that the department’s Civil Rights Division has charged 24 FACE cases against 55 defendants since January 2021. Only two of those 24 cases originated from attacks on pregnancy resource centers — though FBI Director Christopher Wray claimed to Congress on July 24 that the FBI has focused more attention on pro-abortion violence against pro-life facilities.
“This data is particularly troubling in light of the fact that there have been at least 90 individual cases of attacks on pro-life organizations and pregnancy resource centers since the May 2022 leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion for the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case,” Roy wrote in an August 19 letter to the FBI.
Edl was accused by the Biden administration in February 2023 of conspiring to deny women seeking abortions of their constitutional rights. She was one of several participants in peaceful protests at two Michigan abortion facilities in 2020 and 2021.
Her co-defendants also charged in the conspiracy are Cal and Eva Zastrow, Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Joel Curry, and Justin Phillips. The conspiracy charge could land each of them in federal prison for up to 10.5 years and saddle them with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
The charges stem from a peaceful demonstration where the group sat and stood outside of the Northland Family Planning Clinic in Sterling, Michigan alongside a group of other pro-life activists. Edl and Idoni face an additional charge for a pro-life protest the two of them attended at the Women’s Health Clinic in Saginaw, Michigan.
Asked by The Daily Wire in early August how she was feeling about her upcoming trial, Edl emphasized her trust in God. She also pointed to the cross necklace she had around her neck, the same necklace she wore when the forces of Yugoslavian communist dictator Josip Broz Tito rounded up her family because they belonged to the Danube Swabians ethnic group.
“It doesn’t matter how it turns out, God wins in the end,” she said.
