The U.S. Department of Justice has fired four federal prosecutors who worked on cases involving anti-abortion activists, escalating a growing political and legal battle over how abortion-related laws were enforced during the previous administration.
The dismissals, announced Tuesday, were tied to prosecutions brought under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, known as the FACE Act, a 1994 law that makes it a crime to obstruct access to reproductive health services or threaten patients and providers, which was sponsored in 1993 by the now deceased and very Catholic Senator Edward (Ted) Kennedy.
