Remember during the “summer of love” (also known as the Black Lives Matter riots), when Students for Life of America (SFLA) students were arrested for chalking “Black Preborn Lives Matter” on the sidewalk?   

READ: Washington D.C. Police Arrest Two Students for Life Team Members Preparing to Chalk BLACK PREBORN LIVES MATTER outside Planned Parenthood, Stopped Efforts to Paint   

We haven’t forgotten, nor has it slipped our radar that our free speech rights were violated, in fact to this day we’re still fighting a legal battle. This is all while Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser allowed a ginormous “Black Lives Matter” painting on a street a block away from the White House.   

As you may remember, Senior Philanthropy Advisor Warner DePriest, former student, was one of two pro-lifers arrested for attempting to chalk “Black Preborn Lives Matter” outside of the D.C. Planned Parenthood following the city’s acceptance of other – permanent – pain of political messages.  

Five years later under the new Trump administration, the “Black Lives Matter” painting allowed by Mayor Bowser is finally being stripped away, which has us wondering: Does that mean a check is in the mail for us?  

WATCH THE VIDEO:  

Since the COVID-19 pandemic feels like ages ago, let’s look back at what happened that morning.   

According to our earliest reporting, “Prior to the planned, peaceful event, SFLA got a permit and addressed in conversation and a letter that following the city’s decision to allow a private organization to paint a message to defund the police, the pro-life team would also be expressing their speech in paint.”  

When the students attempted to write pro-life messages according to The Washington Post, police arrived, telling them that they couldn’t paint or chalk BLACK PREBORN LIVES MATTER. Despite adhering to the law and city permits, D.C. police arrested DePriest and an SFLA student who attempted to chalk while looters and rioters frolicked in lawlessness around Washington, D.C., the capital of the freest country on earth.  

SFLA President Kristan Hawkins noted that our staff was careful to follow police instructions, but it didn’t seem to matter.   

“After being told by the Metropolitan police that the Mayor has quote ‘opened a Pandora’s box’ by painting public streets, we arrived to find six police cars threatening to arrest our team and students if they painted, even using the tempera paint we bought that the Police Department specifically requested,” said Hawkins. “When we asked if we could at least use sidewalk chalk to chalk our anti-violence message on the streets, the police threatened to arrest us.”  

If left-leaning demonstrators can express anti-police sentiments, pro-life advocates should be allowed to express pro-life sentiments for the preborn, especially for one of the most vulnerable racial groups to abortion. Even though African American women only make up 13% of the female population, they’re 38% of all reported abortions. In New York, more babies are aborted than born alive. Since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, Black babies have died brutal deaths from abortion, which is more than the entire Black population of 1960.  

At SFLA, we adhere to laws and act on peaceful prayer and protest, but that doesn’t mean we don’t stand up for our free speech rights. It seems fairly evident that the standards for race rioters and looters were not the same for peaceful pro-life advocates.   

READ: Better Late Than Never: Trump and Congress Need to Repeal the FACE Act Before It’s Too Late.   

We’ve seen this with the Clinton-era FACE Act as well, which has disproportionately been used to target peaceful pro-lifers and ignore violence against Pregnancy Help Centers (PHCs) from abortion extremists.  

So, while we’d love a check for all our troubles, we’re more interested in seeing Congress repeal the FACE Act once and for all, restore free speech, and punish violent looters and rioters through the law.   

READ NEXT: America Must NOT Regress to Prosecuting Pro-Life Thought Crimes: JD Vance Delivers Free Speech Warning in Europe