Charges dropped against Red Rose rescuers after their arrests closed abortion center

MEDIA, Pennsylvania (LifeSiteNews) — After a successful pro-life rescue that temporarily closed a Pennsylvania abortion center, involved arrests and initial jail time of several days, six Red Rose Rescue activists had all criminal charges against them dismissed on Monday at the Delaware County Courthouse in Media.

The rescuers included Dr. Monica M. Miller, Eric Holmberg, Will Goodman, ChristyAnne Collins, Patty Woodworth, and Joan Andrews Bell.

“We came out on top for sure,” Miller told LifeSiteNews regarding their successful July 31 rescue at the Delaware County Women’s Center and their ability to simply walk out of the courtroom yesterday and celebrate a successful plea hearing.

An August 6 press release from Red Rose Rescue (RRR) explained how the six activists were peacefully offering roses to mothers going into the chemical abortion facility along with resources for alternatives to abortion.

They also provided information to abortion center staff regarding how they could depart the abortion industry and access support from former abortion staff members who had become pro-life.

The rescuers were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and “defiant” trespass after they refused to leave the abortion center at the request of police officers, to whom they explained “we cannot leave as long as the unborn are scheduled to be killed.”

Some of the rescuers were treated harshly by the police, and, oddly, the respective rescuers were held in the “filthy overcrowded” county jail for periods of one to six days.

But as a result of their rescue efforts, the abortion facility closed and thus they celebrated that all the abortion appointments for that day were cancelled.

This particular abortion center only provides chemical abortions through the use of the lethal pill mifepristone, and Miller explained that “there were about eight women that were already in there being readied for their abortion pill regimen. The clinic shut down because of our rescue. Every woman walked out of there without the kill pills.”

“That meant that at least the unborn children had a reprieve of their execution. And this really also gave women an opportunity to change their minds,” said Miller, who serves as director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society. “So, we’ve been keeping those moms in prayer.”

“That was a great victory, a huge success for our Red Rose Rescue,” she emphasized.

READ: Pro-lifers arrested after Red Rose Rescue shuts down abortion center for entire day

Prosecutor ‘very eager to get this case resolved’

After their arrests, the rescuers were each charged with “two class D criminal misdemeanors — defiant trespass and disorderly conduct,” RRR reported, both of which were dismissed as the rescuers pleaded “no contest” to “a simple summary offense (the equivalent of a parking ticket).”

“None of us of course would ever plead guilty because we’re not guilty,” Miller explained. “But there was the offer that if we plead ‘no contest’ we would be given time served. I spent a day in jail. Others spent up to four days in jail. I think Joan Bell spent six days in jail before her husband bonded her out.”

“And so we got the time served. No probation and no fine. And we just walked out of court,” she celebrated.

Miller said the Delaware County prosecutor “was very eager to get this case resolved and he made a lot of concessions.”

Asked why she thought this was so, she speculated that the prosecutor may have just seen the case as “an unusual circumstance” with regard to this nonviolent rescue and desired to expedite it “to avoid a lengthy trial with six defendants and six attorneys” and resolve it “as painlessly as possible.”

‘The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome the Light’

As reported on RRR’s Facebook page, each of the activists was able to address Judge Kevin Kelly during the hearing.

In her remarks, Miller illustrated how she has “actually taken the bodies of aborted unborn out of abortion center trash dumpsters. I’ve seen up close what abortion does to these innocents. I have looked on things the human eye is not meant to see.”

“We went to that abortion center to plead for and defend the lives of unborn babies and equally were there to offer help, love, compassion and understanding to the moms scheduled to kill their children,” she said.

In a text exchange with LifeSiteNews, Goodman reflected on the Monday hearing, stating, “Our primary mission and responsibility as rescuers in the courts is not so much to prove that we are ‘innocent’ but to fight for true justice and personhood for all those babies who are absolutely innocent.”

In his statement to the court, he referenced large banners hanging from the outer facade of the courthouse that quoted the Declaration of Independence: “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ This is precisely why we took action on July 31st – to protect the life and rights of our most defenseless brothers and sisters who are worthy of our love.”

Longtime rescue veteran Joan Andrews Bell emphasized that in all of their efforts they “have worked for justice only through the use of non-violent direct action to safeguard human life and dignity. This is how and why we rescue.”

The statement pledges that RRR continues “its love and solidarity in the essential work to personally defend little ones who are threatened by prenatal murder.”

Further, rescuer Patrica Woodworth affirmed, “We shall keep working with confidence because we believe and know that ‘the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome the Light.'”