The sentences were ordered by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who chided Handy for prioritizing her activism above the “needs” of women, according to local news outlet WUSA9.
“Neither you nor any of the other co-conspirators showed any compassion, empathy, toward those two women needing medical care,” Kollar-Kotelly said. “Your views took precedence over, frankly, their human needs.”
According to a previous DOJ statement, the activists involved in the rescue used “physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, and interfere with the clinic’s employees and a patient because they were providing or obtaining reproductive health services.”
The DOJ also said the activists “forcefully entered the clinic and set about blockading two clinic doors using their bodies, furniture, chains, and ropes.”
Handy is best known as one of the activists who in 2022 discovered the remains of five late-term aborted babies, known as “the D.C. five,” outside the Washington Surgi-Clinic.
Handy’s group, the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), claims that some of these babies bore signs that they were killed in partial-birth abortions, which is illegal under federal law. Despite requests by multiple members of Congress, the office of the D.C. medical examiner has refused to allow any independent investigation into the babies’ deaths.
