"Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your
good deeds and moral excellence, and recognize and honor and glorify
your Father who is in heaven."
(Matthew 5:16)
"I feel very strongly, because of my background, that human life is sacred.
Government does not have the authority to permit what God forbids.
And murder is forbidden by God." -Eva Edl
Eva Edl clearly remembers her 10th birthday. It was spent as a prisoner
inside a post-World War II death camp. Today, this 88 year old grandmother
believes that she may die inside a prison in the United States of America.
Charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act,
better known as FACE, she faces up to 11 years in prison and
$350,000 in fines, compliments of the Biden Administration's
Justice Department. Her crime? Trying to save unborn lives.
Eva Edl is no stranger to tyrannical government overreach. While
growing up in the former nation of Yugoslavia, Edl and her family, who
were Danube Swabians, an ethnic German-speaking people, were rounded
up in the aftermath of the war in Europe by soldiers under the command of
Yugoslavian Communist dictator Tito and sent off to an extermination camp.
At the camp called Gakova, young Eva barely managed to survive the filthy,
rat-infested conditions where the prisoners shared only one outhouse.
Diseases like dysentery and typhoid were rampant. Meanwhile, her
mother had been sent to work as a slave laborer in the fields. She
managed to escape by smuggling herself into the camp in a wagon
full of corn in order to find her young daughter among the
thousands of prisoners. Soldiers poked through the load of
corn with their bayonets and barely missed Eva's mother.
When her mother finally found Eva lying emaciated with hunger
on a pile of rancid straw, her young daughter was festering with lice
and other vermin and was too weak to walk. Her daughter's condition
made Eva's mother rush outside and vomit. Yet, despite the
horrible conditions the little girl had been subjected to, it
seemed to be a miracle that mother and daughter were
finally reunited inside the concentration camp. Eva
was so weak that she did not recognize her mother at first.
"I just couldn't believe it was her, she remembers. It took a while."
Eva drew her own strength and will to survive from the brave women
in her life then-her grandmother, who voluntarily chose to go with her
to the concentration camp in order to protect her; her mother, who
repeatedly risked her own life to find and reunite her children and later
get them safely to the United States, and her sister, who, when forced
by a soldier to dig her own grave, looked him square in the eye
and dared him to kill her. According to Eva, he didn't.
When Eva finally arrived in America in 1955, she was exposed to
another human rights crisis which affected her deeply and which
would later compel her to spring into action in order to save
other human lives marked for certain death.
While taking a course in English in the late 1960's, a fellow
classmate initiated a debate about the possible legalization of
abortion in the United States. At this time, Eva did not know
the definition of abortion. She was absolutely shocked when
the procedure was explained to her and decided then and
there that no one should have the right to end life in the womb.
Then came the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973
when abortion became the law of the land in America.
Eva was appalled that a mother would be legally allowed
to murder her own child according to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Fast forward a decade later to the 1988 Democratic Convention
in Atlanta, Georgia where Eva discovered that abortions were
being routinely performed in special clinics which openly
touted infanticide as a "reproductive healthcare service".
This survivor of a brutal concentration camp- perhaps inspired
by her own courageous mother's efforts to find and save her amid
the harsh reality of government-instigated tyranny, decided
to become involved in the rescue of unwanted babies.
After discussing the matter over with her husband and receiving
his blessing to participate, Eva attended her first "rescue" joining
other pro-life activists led by Operation Rescue's Randall Terry
to pray outside an abortion clinic in Atlanta, where she and
the others attempted to engage the women utilizing the clinic
in conversation, hoping to talk them out of having an abortion.
Despite her sincere efforts, Eva was arrested that day along
with the rest of the pro-life protesters. She remembers that the
police treated them brutally and actually dislocated the arms
of many of those arrested. Eva recalls that when an officer
put his hands on her shoulders she froze-as she was told to do-
and then she heard someone say, "Just use your nightstick."
Although she was not beaten with the nightstick, the policeman
placed the club behind Eva's arms and hung her on it, nearly
dislocating her shoulders. Then she says, they "just
threw me on the bus. Other people got their shoulders
totally dislocated; others got their heads bashed in.
Some ended up in the hospital."
These protesters were not criminals. They were concerned Americans
attempting to save other Americans from being murdered in the womb.
Yet it sounds as if the police that day were breaking up a prison riot!
"We would put our bodies in front on the entrance of the abortion clinic
which I call the 'death camp' , Eva explained about her rescue missions.
So nobody could come in and kill the babies."
The FACE Act, signed into law by abortion-rights champion and former
President Bill Clinton in May, 1994 prohibits the use of force, obstruction,
or property damage intended to interfere with "reproductive health care
services". Though it claims to also protect "houses of worship and pregnancy
resource centers", under the current Biden Administration, FACE has been
politically weaponized to prosecute pro-life activists like Eva Edl.
Although she claims that she has never committed any acts of violence
while participating in pro-life demonstrations and rescues, the Biden
Justice Department has thrice charged Edl with violating the FACE
Act for participating in an "August 2020 "blockade" of an abortion
clinic in Sterling Heights, Michigan; the second charge for an April, 2021
"blockade" in Saginaw, Michigan; and the third for a March, 2021
incident at an abortion clinic in Nashville, Tennessee.
In an interview with The Daily Signal, Eva reflected on her arrests
as compared to the time she was taken away and sent to Gakova.
"When we were rounded up to be killed, we were placed in cattle cars,
and our train was headed towards the extermination camp. What if citizens
of my country would have overcome this fear, and a number of them stood
on those railroad tracks between the gate of the entrance to the death camp
and the train? The train would have to stop. And while the guards on
those trains would be busy rounding up the ones that were in the front
of the train, another group could have come in, pried open our
cattle car and possibly set us free, but nobody did."
Eva later heard stories of people standing by the roadside and weeping
as the cattle cars went by. "But that didn't help us any," she said.
"So when we place our bodies between the woman and the clinic,
we buy time to get our sidewalk counselors the opportunity to speak
with women, and hopefully open their hearts with love for their babies
and let their babies live. We offer them everything there is,
including adoptions. I've offered to adopt babies on the spot...
we are standing between the killer and the victim."
May God bless and protect Eva Edl and all those who courageously
stand for the rights of the Unborn. May every frivolous charge made
by the government against her and other pro-lifers be dropped and allow
true justice to prevail, with Congressional repeal of the controversial FACE Act.
In Jesus Holy Name I Pray
Amen & Amen.
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