Paulette Harlow wants to talk about one thing, and it isn’t her impending federal imprisonment for her November 2023 conviction on so-called “conspiracy against rights” and FACE Act violations in Washington, D.C. It’s the babies she’s going to prison for trying to save.
The 75-year-old great-grandmother has dedicated her life to saving the lives of preborn babies she doesn’t know and to helping women she’s never met. But those rescue efforts are now landing her in federal prison under a pro-abortion federal government focused on protecting abortion access instead of women and their innocent children. In two weeks, she will be forced to surrender for her sentencing unless her appeal is successful.
Harlow has been on house arrest due to poor health since November. Despite her health issues, Harlow was sentenced by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to 24 months in federal prison, followed by 36 months of supervised release for her part in a rescue effort at Washington Surgi-Clinic, a late-term abortion business in D.C., on October 22, 2020. During that rescue, the pro-life activists are said to have used chains, bike locks, furniture, and their bodies to prevent abortions from being committed and to prevent police from removing them from the premises — protest tactics commonly used today and even in decades past.
“I’m not one bit worried,” Harlow told Live Action News. “I’m not going into jail alone. I’m going with Jesus and the Blessed Mother and the saints.” She added, “I’m heartbroken too but we go with God and do what He wants us to do and hopefully this will shed some light on what they are doing to the preborn.”
Harlow, along with Joan Andrews Bell, Jonathan Darnel, Herb Geraghty, William Goodman, Lauren Handy, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, Jean Marshall, and Jay Smith, were arrested for their October 2020 rescue work on March 30, 2022, just five days after Handy and PAAU Founder and Executive Director Terrisa Bukovinac discovered the bodies of five babies aborted late in pregnancy in a medical waste bin outside of that same facility.
WARNING: Images below may be disturbing to readers.
For Harlow, it has always been about the mothers and the babies who are being harmed and killed at abortion facilities. So while she knows hundreds of people are praying for her, she urges them to pray for the babies.
Baby Harriet was found in a medical waste bin outside the Washington Surgi-Clinic abortion facility on March 25, 2022. Experts believe she may have been killed using the federally banned D&X abortion procedure known as partial-birth abortion. Photo courtesy of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising.
Baby Angel was found in a medical waste bin outside of the Washington Surgi-Clinic abortion facility in Washington DC on March 25, 2022. Experts believe he was possibly exsanguinated and dismembered alive.
Under a gag order and unable to share many details of her case, Harlow told Live Action News that she and other pro-lifers were “compelled to go to” Washington Surgi-Clinic to rescue women and babies. They had seen the Live Action undercover video (below) recording the facility’s abortionist, Dr. Cesare Santangelo, expressing willingness to abandon living newborns who had survived late abortions, allowing them to die after birth. The pro-lifers believed what was and is happening to babies inside that facility was a horrific “injustice.” They also believed that what was happening and continues to happen to the mothers is an injustice as well.
Rescue work
“This [rescue] was to save the lives of the mothers and the babies, because abortion kills the mothers too,” said Harlow. “So many women become suicidal afterward. Or they go into a deep depression.” She added, “God made life, not us, and so we have to do a better job of taking care of one another, not just the unborn, but especially women. We’ve done a horrible job at that.”
Harlow is a member of a new age of rescue work. She explained that because most women who seek abortion feel they have no other choice, rescuers enter abortion facilities to speak to the women and ask them why they are at the facility and how the rescuers can help them, so that they can confidently choose life for their babies.
“You go in, and when you do a rescue, you have to agree to be totally peaceful and you can pray and you can sing, and what you do is you go to try to help the mothers and let them know you can help them with whatever they need,” she explained. “If it’s housing, if it’s to talk to the parents so they don’t get kicked out of the house, if it’s a medical need, help to stay in school or to keep their job. […] So that’s what we do. We try to talk to the mother. We try to love them.”
Empathy and compassion
Despite Prosecutor Rebecca Ross’s claim that Harlow “denied empathy and compassion” to the women at Washington Surgi-Center for an abortion that day, on countless occasions it is exactly Harlow’s compassion and empathy that have helped women walk away from abortion. “I’ve experienced mothers and fathers coming back and saying, ‘Thank you so so much.’ They have their child. They are so grateful when they come back and they have that child with them. They say, ‘We can’t thank you enough. You gave us this life.’ Their gratitude is boundless.”
But that compassion and gratitude won’t keep her or the other pro-life rescuers out of prison. Many of them were imprisoned for months while Harlow awaited her sentencing at home due to her health, and they remain in prison still. Ross accused Harlow of using her health as an excuse to avoid that prison time, and Judge Kollar-Kotelly claimed that Harlow violated abortion-seekers’ civil rights, described the rescue action as “violent,” and characterized Harlow as lacking in kindness and remorse. She determined that Harlow must surrender to FMC Carswell, a federal medical center in Fort Worth, Texas, on August 6.
However, Harlow has been experiencing “serious, serious” medical concerns, including signs in her brain that indicate early Alzheimer’s. She’s hoping to get the treatment she needs to slow down that process before she must surrender.
In the meantime, attorneys from the Thomas More Society are working on Harlow’s appeal, based partly on the argument that the judge should have recused herself from the case. “There were a lot of things that weren’t legal about the case,” said Harlow. “The prosecution lied and went to the grand jury, indicted us because of fabrications. […] Claims of violence at the clinic are 100% fabricated. We would never ever be violent.”
Harlow’s dedication
With prison looming, Harlow’s husband John, with whom she shares six children (four adopted), eight grandchildren, and one great-grandchild, is concerned about her.
“He’s very sad,” said Harlow. “He knows that he’ll be ok and we’ll be ok and God’s going to take care of us. It’s awful to see, he’s just really sad. He said, ‘I’d go for her or with her if I could.’ He’s offering it up. When we were married, we consecrated our married life to our Lady of Guadalupe [the Catholic patroness of preborn children] and to the pro-life [cause].”
While she’s in prison, she said her husband “will take care of the grandchildren and have the grandchildren over and write to me and visit me if he can, pray to God, and be a good citizen like he is now. We’ll get through it together, and it will be fine.”
Harlow’s marriage has indeed been dedicated to ending abortion. They’ve testified before Congress, participated in marches, and met with senators and representatives to plead for the lives of innocent preborn children and better support for women. Rescue was “the next most reasonable thing to do,” she said. “If there was a house on fire and kids inside, I’d run inside and wouldn’t worry about catching on fire. It doesn’t matter whose kids they are.”
Abortion businesses are, in essence, those buildings ablaze with evil, horrific, violent procedures meant to kill innocent victims. Harlow believes the best course of action is to love these women and to love their children, but the federal government aims to prevent her from doing so. Harlow remains passionate about outreach.
“This is the worst form of child abuse. The worst form of child abuse is when a child dies. These kids die horrible deaths,” she said, adding, “We’ve become selfish and complacent. It’s not gonna fly anymore. Pro-lifers should be doing more. I think any pro-lifer should be doing as much as they can. I know what God has called me to do.”
