CV NEWS FEED // Pro-abortion activists are targeting the Maine home and church of Leonard Leo, a conservative lawyer whose work helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

Last Saturday, over three dozen protesters gathered outside Leo’s house, with one dressed as an “angry uterus.” As the Maine Wire reported, one held a sign “with letters dripping blood red” reading “Leo, You should not be enjoying your life here while you destroy others’ lives. Get out!” Other attendees’ signs called him various epithets from “reproductive terrorist” to “one of the most dangerous men in the United States.”

Leo, a practicing Catholic, is the Co-Chairman and former Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society (FedSoc). The originalist and textualist legal organization was instrumental in the vetting, nomination, and confirmation processes of several of the justices in the Supreme Court’s 6-3 majority which overturned Roe. The Harvard Gazette has callled FedSoc “the conservative club that came to dominate the Supreme Court.”

Leo also received the 2022 John Paul II New Evangelization Award, and runs the Sacred Spaces Foundation. The charity helps restore historic religious buildings, including Leo’s home parish, St. Ignatius Church on Mount Desert Island, Maine.

Since the Dobbs decision, Leo’s home has been the site of many pro-abortion demonstrations, where protestors have regularly berated him with anti-Catholic slurs. 

During one such instance last year, Innkeeper Anna Durand went on an expletive-laden rant from her car yelling at Leo, who was with his family, “You’re going to Hell. Your whole family is going to Hell,” she shouted. In an interview with The New Yorker, Durand said that the experience was “so satisfying” and that she “drove away happy.”

At last Saturday’s protest outside Leo‘s home, there was even a sign that compared the Catholic father of seven to the Ku Klux Klan, which is widely known to be an anti-Catholic group.

“Leo is a fundamentalist Catholic,” stated Harriet Mendlowitz on Facebook. “His extreme, reactionary views inform his relentless, theocratically-based drive to pack the courts with like-minded judges who willfully and disingenuously deny an ever-changing and evolving world.”

Mendlowitz made these remarks as a part of the Mount Desert Island Indivisible group, a chapter of a left-wing activist organization that bills itself as the “home of the resistance.” 

“Do we continue to honor the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all of just a select few that people like Leo deem worthy of protection?” she went on, referring to the unborn:

It seems that unnamed fetuses take precedence over grown women with established identities, hopes, dreams and ambitions. And, as if forcing women to carry their unwanted pregnancies to term weren’t enough of an assault on their personal liberty, these religious zealots would deny women the contraception that would make abortions less likely.

Mendlowitz continued by attacking the American flag and statues of Jesus and Mary displayed outside of the Leo residence:

Do people who are secure in their beliefs feel the need to flaunt them publicly? More importantly, does this display demonstrate his support for or against the separation of Church and State? His answer seems crystal clear.

Leo’s Catholicism has also been extensively attacked by the media. The Lever, a far-left news outlet founded by former Bernie Sanders speechwriter David Sirota, ran a hit piece Monday about Leo’s non-profit Sacred Spaces, and his effort to preserve his parish. 

The article’s author, Andrew Perez, referred to the lawyer as “the architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority” who “oversees a billion-dollar political influence machine.” 

Perez wrote that “Leo’s church purchase appears to be the launch of a broader religious advocacy mission: starting with the exclusive Maine community that’s already enraged by how he’s worked to imprint his conservative religious views on American society.” Perez also noted that the activist outlet unsuccessfully attempted to score an interview with Leo while he was on his way to church on Sunday. 

Leo defended his life’s work against the critics’ charges:

This evangelizing work extends to every facet of life, including law, public policy, and politics, which are the areas that I know best. They need light and salt, no less than any other field. And many here have long promoted a legal culture that respects and upholds the dignity of the human person. 

This work is an integral part of the new evangelization, insofar as it reflects Catholic teaching, spreads Christ’s message, and helps draw others closer to God and what He wants for us.

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