The two were among six activists who, in November 2021, trespassed in the waiting room of the Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, handing out roses to women and advocating against abortion, according to news reports and a news release from the women. The other four were Joan Andrews Bell, Kristin Turner, Cassidy Shooltz and Jonathan Darnel.
Bell, another longtime activist, was also sentenced to 30 days. Turner, Shooltz and Darnel were sentenced to four days apiece, according to court records.
This was the first time the four who received the shorter sentences have been jailed, said Caroline Smith, a member of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), a group to which Handy, Bukovinac and most of the others belong. Handy has been jailed for her activism before, Smith said, but 30 days will be her longest stint.
The Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic declined to comment Tuesday.
“Our actions reflect that we accept consequences,” Handy told The Washington Post before she was sentenced. “I think it brings legitimacy to our movement.”
PAAU said it will be holding nightly vigils outside the Alexandria Detention Center.
Late last month, Handy was found guilty by a jury of trespassing and resisting police during a protest at a Flint, Mich., abortion clinic in 2019, WNEM reported. She is scheduled to be sentenced there in September and faces up to two years in jail, she said.
Smith said Handy faces similar charges in California and Ohio.
In March, the Justice Department charged Handy and eight others with federal civil rights offenses in connection with an alleged blockade at the Washington Surgi-Clinic in D.C. in 2020. No trial date in that case has been set. If convicted of the offenses, the defendants each face up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $350,000.
The same day in March that the federal indictment was announced, D.C. police removed five fetuses from a D.C. rowhouse where Handy had been staying.
Handy and Bukovinac said they had obtained them and other fetal remains from a medical waste company worker who was picking them up from the Washington Surgi-Clinic.
The medical waste company has denied that its workers handed the activists any remains. Handy and Bukovinac have said that they buried most of them with the help of a Catholic priest at an unknown location.
Read More: Lauren Handy, DC antiabortion activists sentenced for trespassing
