A Centerville, Tenn., man last week told Fox News that he was awarded a seven-figure settlement from the Department of Justice stemming from his part in a March 2021 physical blockade of a Carafem clinic in Mt. Juliet.
Paul Vaughn was convicted for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a 1994 law making it a felony to use force, obstruction or inflict property damage to interfere with reproductive health care services. He was part of a group of mostly out-of-state activists who livestreamed the event, and introduced a patient as a “mom coming to kill her baby.” At the time, Carafem was performing abortions, but one year later, the facility was banned following the overturning of Roe v. Wade and enactment of Tennessee’s abortion trigger ban.
In January 2025, while his case was on appeal, Vaughn and two other Tennesseans were among the 23 anti-abortion activists pardoned by President Donald Trump. Shortly after, DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle penned a memorandum indicating that future abortion-related FACE Act prosecutions would happen only in “extraordinary circumstances.”
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“More than a million dollars from this government to reward a man who broke federal law harassing patients, healthcare workers and volunteers,” says Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi. “The administration is rewarding the very people who are willing to use violence to advance their agenda. Regardless of your views on abortion, we should all condemn this in the strongest possible terms.”
The day after Vaughn announced his settlement news, Planned Parenthood Federation of America filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration for reducing its Title X funding.
The Mt. Juliet Carafem location couldn’t issue a statement about Vaughn’s settlement, because the facility is no longer there. It stopped offering abortions under Tennessee’s trigger ban in August 2022 and closed in May 2023. Carafem now has locations only in Atlanta, Chicago and Washington, D.C., while Planned Parenthood locations in Nashville, Memphis and Knoxville pivoted to abortion navigation, as well as menopause care, vasectomies, gender-affirming care and other reproductive healthcare services.
An April report from the Department of Justice claims that the Biden administration disproportionately prosecuted anti-abortion activists under the FACE Act. Vaughn’s lawyer said his client was arrested in a “predawn FBI raid” for his “pro-life beliefs” in front of his wife and some of his 11 children.
“This Department will not tolerate a two-tiered system of justice,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an April statement. “No Department should conduct selective prosecution based on beliefs. The weaponization that happened under the Biden Administration will not happen again, as we restore integrity to our prosecutorial system.”
Blanche’s statement is in stark contrast to the DOJ statement released just a few years earlier under the Biden administration.
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“These defendants knowingly chose to violate laws they disagreed with,” said Henry C. Leventis, former U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, in January 2024, when six defendants including Vaughn were convicted. “The jury’s verdict today is a victory for the rule of law in this country and a reminder that we cannot pick and choose which laws we follow. It is also a testament to the outstanding work done in this case by the trial team and our law enforcement partners.”
Despite the state’s nearly total ban on abortion, anti-abortion activists continue to travel to Tennessee in an attempt to further chip away at reproductive freedom. A group identifying as abortion abolitionists from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion traveled from out of state in March to support legislation that would have allowed homicide charges — including first-degree murder — to apply in cases involving “unborn children.” As it was originally presented, this means fetal homicide charges could ostensibly be brought against a person for receiving an abortion. The legislation ultimately did not pass.
Earlier this year, Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi also worked with Democratic representatives to bring the Maternal Health Care Protection Act, inspired by a Tennessee woman who was denied a sterilization procedure to protect her “sacred fertility” and another who was denied care from an OB-GYN because she was unmarried. Such discrimination is legal under Tennessee’s Medical Ethics Defense Act, which went into effect in 2025 and allows medical professionals to deny care that goes against their “conscience.”
In June, Tennessee became the first state to erect a “monument to the unborn” on Capitol grounds.
