VICTORY! Charges have been dropped against two Red Rose rescuers who engaged in peaceful activities to save mothers and children from abortion. The rescuers, Will Goodman and Tony Puckett, entered Delta Clinic of Baton Rouge, Louisiana to talk and pray with women in the clinic’s waiting room. Delta Clinic committed abortions through 20 weeks of pregnancy. “Red Rose” rescues are so named because rescuers give women a red rose attached to a prayer card and a list of pro-life resources for pregnant women.
Abortion workers called the police to remove Goodman and Puckett. The rescuers were taken into custody and charged with trespassing. Trial was set for last week, but the prosecutor requested that the case be dismissed because the abortion mill is permanently closed since abortion is now prohibited in Louisiana!
Louisiana law imposes criminal penalties on abortionists, with exceptions for ectopic pregnancy, to save the life of the mother, or when the baby is deemed “medically futile.” The intent of the abortion ban is to “preserve the life of each unborn child to the fullest extent permitted by law.”
The Life Legal affiliated attorney representing Goodman and Puckett asserted the “necessity defense,” which is absolute defense to the crime charged when the defendant is acting in defense of other persons. The City of Baton Rouge claimed that unborn children are not protected “persons” under the law, so the necessity defense did not apply.
Our attorney argued that since Roe v. Wade has been overturned, states may “pass laws defining a human child in a mother’s womb as a human being or a person.” According to the attorney’s motion, because Louisiana law now recognizes unborn children as human beings with legal protections, “it is undisputed that they [the rescuers] were acting in defense of unborn persons.”