Pro-Life Activist Targeted by Biden DOJ Suffers Serious Head Injury In Prison

Pro-life prisoners across the United States are eagerly awaiting the inauguration of Donald Trump, the future president, who has promised to investigate whether President Joe Biden’s administration “unjustly” persecuted pro-life activists, and to “get them out of the gulags and back to their families where they belong.”

In the meantime, these activists are experiencing the grim realities of prison life. William Goodman is imprisoned in Danbury, Connecticut’s Federal Correctional Institution, where the Justice Department’s Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act charges landed him for engaging in a “conspiracy to blockade [a] reproductive health care clinic to prevent it from providing and patients from receiving, reproductive health services.”

Goodman had participated in what he and his fellow pro-life activists describe as a “rescue,” wherein they attempted to stop women from aborting their unborn babies by blocking the entrance to a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic in 2020. As a response to the 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade, the Justice Department sought out instances in which they could enforce the FACE Act — and Goodman was one of those who was targeted.

He’s currently serving a 27-month sentence in FCI Danbury, with a projected release date of July 2025.

Earlier this month, Goodman contacted The Daily Wire to share that he had spent the night in the emergency room. He had fallen out of the top bunk in his cell, which stands over 5 feet high without guard rails along the side, he shared — such a dramatic fall that one of his fellow inmates reportedly thought he had died. He said he was taken by ambulance to the emergency room, where he underwent CT scans and an MRI.

“When I fell, I landed on the top of my head with all of my force,” he wrote. “The loud noise woke up other men near by. I cracked my head open and lost a lot of blood. I knocked myself unconscious. But woke up on/off a couple times.”

(Photo by YUKI IWAMURA/AFP via Getty Images)

“I was very dizzy and throwing up blood,” he said. “I had tingling sensations on my left side. I also needed stitches in my left temple in a couple places.”

Doctors reportedly told him he had minor skull fractures but no serious spinal injury. He had hoped he would be kept overnight, believing he had a severe concussion, but was sent back to the prison that evening.

“It has been chaotic and very uncomfortable here,” he wrote. “I suffer with severe dizziness and nausea, feeling sleepy but never able to sleep, I am having some flashbacks and my head is sore.”

He expressed gratitude to his fellow prisoners, including some men imprisoned for actions related to the January 6 Capitol riot, for taking care of him, saying that they helped move some of his things and picked up food for him since he was too dizzy to walk around and go to the “chow hall.” But for days, Goodman has been in bed with severe concussion symptoms.

He writes that he’s only been given Tylenol and anti-nausea medication, and worries that the prison should install guard rails on the bunks, “especially for geezers like me who have occasional vertigo.”

“Right now I could be worse,” he said in a message last week. “I just feel dizzy and abandoned and sore and sick. But it could be worse…mostly I stay in bed and drink water and take meds and try to sleep. But I can’t sleep. It is like a cruel torture. My left side of my head is like a constant migraine that seems to bang all night. Plus the loud prison noise and bright lights add to the turmoil. And the uncomfortable beds and no pillow…”

FCI Danbury declined to comment on Goodman’s condition to The Daily Wire. The prison has previously been referenced in the news when it housed Steven Bannon, who was released in late October ahead of the election, as well as several Jan. 6 prisoners. Bannon was imprisoned for contempt of Congress and for refusing to comply with the Jan. 6 House Committee, and his allies argue that the weaponized Biden Justice Department pursued his imprisonment out of political motivations.

Goodman has previously expressed thankfulness that he is able to speak to his fellow prisoners about the importance of protecting the unborn.

“Most cannot believe that we are in prison for defending innocent babies!” Goodman told The Daily Wire before the election, describing his fellow prisoners. “They think it’s crazy the federal government has come after us with such hostility…Many of the fellas have expressed their sadness over their wives or girlfriends killing their babies by abortion. Their stories are heartbreaking to hear.”

Trump has promised to look into these cases of pro-life activists targeted by the Biden administration and to free those “unjustly victimized.”

“Paulette is one of many peaceful pro-lifers who Joe Biden has rounded up, sometimes with SWAT teams, and thrown them in jail,” Trump said in June as he spoke at the Faith and Freedom Coalition, referring to 75-year-old pro-life activist Paulette Harlow.

“Many people are in jail over this. … We’re going to get that taken care of immediately — [on the] first day,” he added, promising to “rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who’s unjustly victimized by the Biden regime, including Paulette, so we can get them out of the gulags and back to their families where they belong.”

There are currently 11 pro-life activists imprisoned by the Biden Justice Department: Lauren Handy is serving a 57-month sentence in Tallahassee FCI, Herb Geraghty is serving a 27-month sentence in FDC Philadelphia, Heather Idoni will serve 24 months, and maybe more, from the Sanilac County Sheriff’s jail, Jean Marshal is serving 24 months in FCI Danbury with Goodman, Joan Bell is serving 27 months in FDC Philadelphia, Jonathan Darnel is serving 34 months in FCI Thomson, John Hinshaw is serving 21 months in FMC Devens, Calvin Zastrow is serving six months in in FCI Thomson, and Bevelyn Williams is serving 41 months in FCI Aliceville.

Steven LeFamine just finished serving 60 days in FCI Williamsburg, and Paulette Harlow, Coleman Boyd, Chester Gallagher, Paul Place, James Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, Dennis Green, and Paul Vaughn are all serving home detention sentences.

Pro-life activists Eva Edl, Justin Phillips, and Joel Curry are awaiting sentencing.

On November 21, The Daily Wire reported, that a federal judge paused the Justice Department’s case against seven of these pro-life activists related to their peaceful protest at an abortion clinic in Michigan: Edl, Gallagher, Idoni, Joel Curry, Justin Phillips, Cal Zastrow, and Eva Zastrow.

The judge, an Obama appointee, paused the case until Trump takes office, saying: “As further discussed on the record, the Court will conduct another status conference during the week of March 24, 2025, to receive a report from the Government trial team as to whether there has been any change in the Government’s position with respect to the continuation of this case and/or with respect to the positions expected to be advanced by the Defendants in their post-trial motions.”

Thomas More Society attorney Steve Crampton, who has represented many of the pro-lifers, previously told The Daily Wire that Leitman decided to stay the proceedings “in light of the election results and the likelihood that a new Department of Justice would alter its policies concerning prosecution of these FACE cases and in particular the use of the Conspiracy Against Rights statute against these defendants.”