A Republican congressman announced on Twitter Tuesday that he has invited pro-life activist Mark Houck to be his guest at tonight’s State of the Union address, declaring that Joe Biden “should see the faces of those he seeks to destroy.”
Last week, a Pennsylvania jury acquitted Houck after Biden’s Department of Justice charged him with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which makes it a federal crime to use physical force with the intent to injure, intimidate and interfere with anyone obtaining or providing abortion services.
“Privileged to welcome my SOTU guest, Mark Houck, tweeted Rep. Scott Perry (R-Penn.) Tuesday morning.
In response to the invitation, Houck said in a statement: “My wife and I are honored to be asked by the Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry to attend The State of The Union as his guests. We hope our presence with members of Congress will continue to raise awareness about the injustice that was rendered against my family and others in recent months.”
He added: “We pray for the opportunity to meet with those who need to hear our story and for the eventual opportunity to testify before the Judiciary Committee about our reckless experience with the Department of Justice.”
Houck never disputed that he pushed Bruce Love, a Planned Parenthood escort, away from his then-12 year-old son after Love had approached them and allegedly harassed and hurled profanities at them. Video of the altercation showed that the father and son were standing away from the clinic and did not initiate the altercation.
The incident was so minor city police and the district attorney declined to file charges against Houck, and after the escort filed a private criminal complaint in Philadelphia’s municipal court, the case was dismissed.
Nonetheless, the Biden DOJ decided to pursue the case as a potential violation of the FACE Act, and on the morning of September 24, 2022, about 25 to 30 FBI agents descended on Houck’s rural home and arrested him in front of his terrified seven children.
They surrounded the house with rifles in firing position, and “started pounding on the door and yelling for us to open it,” Houck’s wife Ryan Marie told LifeSite after the raid.
She said her husband tried to calm them, saying, “‘Please, I’m going to open the door, but, please, my children are in the home. I have seven babies in the house.’ But they just kept pounding and screaming.”
When he opened the door, “they had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” Ryan-Marie said.
“The kids were all just screaming. It was all just very scary and traumatic,” she added.
“Mark Houck and his family are innocent victims of the radical Left’s reprehensible abuse of power, which systematically seeks to destroy the lives of hard-working Americans whose only ‘crimes’ are using their God-given constitutional rights to protect their families, faith, and way of life,” Perry tweeted on Tuesday.
Privileged to welcome my SOTU guest, Mark Houck, an innocent victim of @POTUS’s reprehensible abuse of power, whose only “crime” was to use his God-given constitutional rights to protect his family, faith, and way of life. @POTUS should see the faces of those he seeks to destroy.
— Rep. Scott Perry (@RepScottPerry) February 7, 2023