Pro-life activist sentenced to nearly 5 years in prison in 'shocking' outcome: 'Not the America I know'

Two pro-life activists were sentenced to several years in prison Tuesday on charges of conspiracy against rights and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) stemming from a 2020 "rescue action" at a Washington, D.C.-based abortion clinic.

Lauren Handy, 30, was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison for organizing the protest, while co-defendant John Hinshaw, 69, was sentenced to a year and nine months. Handy and Hinslaw, along with seven others convicted on the same charges, blocked access to the Washington Surgi-Clinic on Oct. 22, 2020 while chaining themselves to furniture inside the clinic, according to the indictment.

The hourslong protest was livestreamed on one of the protester's Facebook accounts.

"Our ‘crime’ was ‘attempting to stop the slaughter of late-term babies in the Santangelo abortion mill in Washington, D.C.,'" Hinslaw said in a statement obtained by Fox News Digital. "Additionally, the importance of these sentences cannot be overstated, since never before has ‘peaceful civil disobedience’ faced such legal violence as our federal law enforcement is now practicing!"

PRO-LIFE ACTIVISTS FOUND GUILTY ON CONSPIRACY CHARGES FOR 2020 ‘RESCUE ACTION’ AT DC CLINIC

During the jury trial last year, Handy and another co-defendant, Herb Geraghty, referenced pro-life organization Live Action's "Inhuman: Undercover in America's Late-Term Abortion Industry" video as influencing their decision to participate in the blockade.

One part of the video, released a decade ago, shows Santangelo telling an undercover woman if she went into labor and delivered before the "termination part of the procedure" was carried out, "then we would not help it."

Following the indictment, remains of apparently