Charges dropped against Anglican pastor who offered assistance to women at CA Planned Parenthood

Anglican pastor Father James Linton, who was arrested on October 7, 2016, outside a San Bernardino Planned Parenthood for “criminal trespass,” announced by video this week that the charges against him have been dropped:

Life Legal Defense Foundation took up the case against Fr. Linton, stating that Linton had “for over a year… had a peaceful presence outside the abortion facility, offering information and prayer to women seeking abortions.” LLDF remarked on Linton’s arrest:

Linton continued to reach out to young women entering the facility when he was stopped by a police officer who had just arrived on the scene. The officer told Father Linton to “be cool.” Linton went to the parking lot of an adjacent pregnancy resource center and began preaching—with the express consent of the pregnancy center. The officer followed Linton, grabbed him, and put him in handcuffs, even though he was not on or near Planned Parenthood’s property at the time of arrest.

The officer followed him, grabbed him, and put him in handcuffs. He chastised Father Linton for not being “cool.” Linton’s response? “If I were interested in being cool, I wouldn’t be standing outside an abortion clinic preaching.”

As previously reported by Live Action News, the medical director of the abortion facility (Jennefer Russo of Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties) was caught on one of the Center for Medical Progress’s undercover videos discussing her organization’s fetal tissue supply arrangement with Da Vinci Biosciences and revealing that her facility was not using digoxin to ensure fetal death prior to late-term abortions, leaving open the possibility that babies were being born alive during abortions.

Linton stated previously that on the day of his arrest, the Planned Parenthood center’s director had approached him, commenting that she “loves going to court and prosecuting people like [Linton].”