Pardoned for Life

A Conversation with Activist Bevelyn Beatty Williams

Bevelyn Beatty Williams spoke at a “Jesus Matters” rally in front of an abortion clinic in New York City in June 2020. At this time, abortion centers were operating as normal while schools and businesses had been ordered closed because of Covid. The rally was intended to be an opportunity for Christians to come together and speak up for the children who could not speak for themselves. Law enforcement was present throughout, and she was not arrested or even ticketed for any violation of law.

More than two years later, she was notified that she was being charged with two crimes in connection with the rally. After a two-week trial, she was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison.

Your pro-life activism is not about being judgmental or holier than thou. It’s personal for you.

When I first started going to the abortion clinic, it was because Governor Cuomo had legalized abortion up to nine months. I was more comfortable ministering to the homeless and things like that, but when he did that, I decided my comfort is irrelevant. This is a new devil. This is Moloch and Baal. These are God’s children walking in here and God’s children being scheduled to die.

When I was 15, Iwent into an abortion clinic. My dad’s girlfriend took me. There were people outside, and I remember her saying, “Don’t look at them. Look down.” So I looked down, and I did the unthinkable. I got my abortion done. Years later, standing in front of this clinic in New York, the Lord hit me. Boom! Those people were my opportunity to say, I’ve changed my mind. But I wasn’t brave enough at the time to do that. At the time, I was thinking they were just crazy white people with their signs; let me just ignore them. Years later, I realized they weren’t crazy. They were witnesses of Christ. So now I’m going to do for girls walking in what they did for me back then.

How did you become a Christian?

I was your bad girl party girl. One night I came home from the bar after doing shots with my friends.

I was definitely intoxicated. I didn’t like to show any vulnerability then, so I went into the bathroom so my roommate wouldn’t hear me, and

I started to cry. I cried and cried.

I prayed to God, God help me because I am miserable.

About two weeks later I was in jail waiting to be bailed out by my dad, and I met this Middle Eastern woman. She was mute. She didn’t speak, and I was curious because she did not look like she belonged in jail. So I went up to her, and I introduced myself. She looked at me intently. She got out a piece of paper and wrote, “You need to surrender your life. God knows about that time you were in the bathroom crying out. You know, the next thing after jail is death. You need to give your life to Christ. The Lord will change your life around for the better, but you need to surrender.”

That woman just read my life. For her to read me like that—I knew, this is God! This God is speaking to me. I’m struck! My heart is pierced. And I’m thinking to myself, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to end like that.

I remember walking out of that jail and saying to God, Lord, I don’t really know how to be a Christian. I don’t know how to have faith in you. I never thought Christ didn’t exist. I knew he was Lord, but I didn’t know how to make him my lord. Up until this time, I did everything I did to survive. My circumstances were tough, so every decision I made was a survival decision. To go from survival mode to faith—I didn’t know how to do that. So I said, Lord, I’m going to trust you, but you’re going to have to show me. And that was the introduction to my faith.

How did you hold yourself together in prison?

By the time I went to prison, I was rooted. I wasn’t ashamed when they asked me, why are you here? I’m here for preaching the gospel. I know who I am. I know where I came from. I’m not walking around with regrets. I’m solidified in my faith.

Did I want to be in prison? Absolutely not! But at the same time, I knew why I was there. I knew who I was there for.

You were quite literally a prisoner because of the gospel.

Correct, for my faith. Persecution, the Bible tells you, comes with the package. But at the same time I am also promised that the kingdom of heaven will be mine. Blessed are those who are persecuted for his name’s sake, for the kingdom of heaven will be theirs. So I was walking in his promises, even in a concrete jungle.

Still, I could not sit and stew in depression in prison. I could not stew too much on being away from my daughter, on being away from my husband, or I would break. And on top of that, I’m mission based. I thought, Here I am in the same position as that woman who ministered to me and pulled me out of my sin. There must be some bad mama jamas in this prison that I gotta talk to. They must be so heavy for God’s kingdom that I have to get up out of my satin pajamas and my comfy little memory foam bed to be in this prison for them. So I’m going to do it. They must be worth it.

At the Jesus Matters rally, you were not arrested or ticketed for anything, but there was some kind of altercation.

Planned Parenthood has a strict non-engagement policy, but they went against their own policies and recruited abortion supporters to protest our rally. I was standing on a public sidewalk—as long as I’m not blocking the door, there aren’t legal restrictions on standing there. When anyone wanted to get in, I moved. I’ve been going there since January of 2019, and I was never arrested.

On this day in June of 2020, a lady was walking in, so I moved aside. But as I’m moving, one of Planned Parenthood’s protesters opens the door. Boom! She whacks me with the door! I lost my balance and fell against it. As I’m getting up and off the door, she claims, “My hand, my hand’s stuck in the door!” The police were there. They looked around and said to her, “There’s a lot going on here. We’re not getting involved in that. You want this woman arrested, but everybody’s breaking the rules here. You have the pro-choice people blocking the door. You’re opening the door. This is chaos. No.” And that was it. Everyone walked away.

Two years later, I’m federally indicted as a violent FACE Act offender.¹ There were two charges: FACE and conspiracy. They wanted to indict me on conspiracy as a ringleader. A FACE conviction gets you maybe six months. If you get convicted on a conspiracy charge, that’s a five-to-ten-year sentence. My FACE indictment was based on my Jesus Matters rally. My conspiracy indictment was based on all the different rallies I had been to around the U.S., including Atlanta, Nashville, and Fort Myers, Florida. They jumbled those up and tried to paint a picture to the jury of me as a ringleader, saying that I conspired all of these events. What they failed to realize is that I’m not the only person who does pro-life events. If any pro-life organization is having a pro-life event, whether they’re Catholic, Protestant, or whatever, if they invite me, I’m coming. The prosecution was saying that because I attended these other events, because I recorded them, and because I was loud, I was the one who orchestrated them. I was the ringleader.

The jury found me guilty on FACE, but they found me not guilty of conspiracy. Yet during sentencing, all the other locations were brought back up. So basically, even though I was found not guilty of conspiracy, the judge used the same accusations to beef up my sentencing bracket. That’s how I got sentenced to three and a half years.

You were being made an example of.

And they said that.

You described having a kind of epiphany at sentencing.

The judge asked me if I wanted to say anything. I asked if I could use the bathroom first, and while I was in there, I looked in the mirror and said, Lord, Holy Ghost, you take over my mouth. Whatever I’m about to say, I want you to say it. And then, I went back out and it all just flowed. The gist of what I said was this:

You guys look at my background—my petty crimes from 10 years ago that I did before I became a Christian, a misdemeanor trespassing charge from Nashville, and me being a “ringleader,” even though I was found not guilty of that—y’all look at that record of things that y’all think I did wrong, and you judge me.

You know, I feel like a negro out of line. If I were a real criminal, I believe I would have gotten a slap on the wrist. I also believe if I were walking around here half naked, twirling around the stage and doing the things that you approve of us doing, I would have been applauded. But because I am standing against an agenda like abortion, I’m public enemy number one.

It’s such a contradiction. You tell people this is a yellow brick road that you pave for us to go and get these abortions. Y’all just pave it and say, go. It’s your body, your choice. But now, after I get the abortion, I was suffering from a broken heart, and I have this record that you judge—now you’re ready to throw me in jail. Y’all are setting us up for failure.

Jesus came into my life. He delivered me. He set me free. I did what I did for Jesus. That’s the reason why all these people here came to my sentencing. They are my family. They’re all different colors, all different backgrounds, all different creeds. The one thing that brought us together was Jesus. I didn’t stand out there doing what I do to condemn or judge anyone. I did it because I experienced abortion. I lived it. But Jesus saved me. Jesus washed me, he set me free. I’m not sitting here putting up a ­façade. This really happened. I really got saved.

After I finished, all the judge said in response was, “All right. Well, 41 months.”

I just pray that she repents. She doesn’t understand the cost, the cost of leadership. They think they get away with it. But you don’t. You will answer to God for the decisions you make on someone else’s life.

—Bevelyn spent three months in prison until President Trump pardoned her on his third day in office.

Note
1. Signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrance (FACE) prohibits obstructing the entrance to an abortion facility as well as using force or threatening force against someone seeking to enter.