Will Goodman is a political prisoner for the pro-life cause currently serving a two-and a-half-year sentence for pro-life activism. The following is taken from an interview conducted by Bernadette Patel for the Human Life Review mainly through the federal prison messaging system. The text has been edited for clarity and cut for spacing reasons.
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Thank you, Will Goodman, for taking the time to do this interview. Why are you in prison?

I am in federal prison because the US “Department of Justice” (DOJ) under the Biden Administration is an ardent defender of the grave, murderous injustice perpetrated by the abortion industry. The rescue I and eight others participated in was at an abortion facility in our nation’s capital. In response to our just acts, the DOJ directed a false indictment against us, authoritarian FBI raids, and a biased trial. The DC 9 (or Garland 9), as we are known, are prisoners of conscience. We truly believe in the “self-evident truth that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,’’ the first and foremost of which is the right to life, and we act in accord with this truth. When a human person is in danger of being murdered, the first response should be to directly rescue him or her from danger. We are in prison because the DOJ denies the humanity of the preborn human person and unjustly punishes those who justly attempt to “rescue those who are perishing” (Proverbs 24:11).

Another and slightly different reason relates to a long history, i.e., prison is the place where godless governments place Christians who live out their faith. In the US today, this sad tradition of persecution continues. When I chose to obey Almighty God rather than pharaoh (unjust government) and rescue those being brought to slaughter, according to the command in Proverbs 24:11, I understood that members of a godless government who believe in child sacrifice would seek to persecute me. But the lives of the babies—and the souls of sinners—are invaluable to God; we should not be deterred by the threats of an evil secular regime from acting in obedience to Him. We are in prison because we acted with obedience, love, and proportionate effort to rescue those subject to destruction. Still another reason why we are in federal prison is because so few Christians and people of good faith are willing to rescue or support rescue. The fewer the rescuers, the easier it is for a large federal agency like the DOJ to target us.

Tell me more about yourself and how you became part of the pro-life movement?

I became very involved in the pro-life mission in 1993, after I saw Pope St. John Paul II at World Youth Day in Denver and heard him say, “Young people, defend life! Use your gifts and talents and intelligence and time and faith and love to build a culture of life.” These became my marching orders from High Command.

I was active in pro-life work at the University of Illinois and the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center on campus. After graduation, I joined Collegians Activated to Liberate Life (CALL, a mostly Catholic rescue group active in the ’90s) full time and traveled the US speaking to university students and getting them active in the movement. Then, for about 18 years, I was part of a small Catholic pro-life community called “The Servants of Our Lady of Guadalupe,’’ which was dedicated to promoting the Gospel of Life through prayer, study, and charitable action, with a special charism to practice solidarity with the abandoned victims of abortion in our nation. I was also able to obtain a master’s degree in theology from Ave Maria University while with the Servants. Later, in 2016, I earned a certification in bioethics from the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. The next year, I became a full-time rescuer with Red Rose Rescue—a loose coalition of volunteers who work to defend moms, dads, and babies subject to the immediate violence of abortion. I have been involved with several rescues (approximately 25), have been in about 20 jails and prisons, having served nearly a total of two years as a prisoner for life. I have about one more year of prison to go as I write this. I am to be released in July of 2025, unless Trump wins and pardons us.

How does your faith influence your activism?

When I was in college I had a profound re-conversion to my Catholic faith. I felt a longing to be with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament all of the time. Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, St. Mother Teresa, and St. Therese of Lisieux were big motivators for me. They loved Jesus in the Eucharist and Jesus in the poor. I wanted to do that too. I wanted a mission of love. And I did not wish for this mission to be “easy.”

I prayed about “who” to serve in this world, as there are so many people in need. I wanted to perform both spiritual and corporal works of mercy out of charity—to serve Jesus in the “poorest of the poor.” Praying before the Blessed Sacrament, I asked Jesus who HE wanted me to serve; who were the “poorest” that He would send me to. In contemplation, and working with my priestly spiritual director, I felt drawn to the poor preborn babies who were being abandoned by their own parents, by the government, and often by members of the church. I realized that loving Jesus in the smallest, most invisible people would be challenging. Seeing Christ in the human being at the single-cell zygotic stage of development did not come naturally to me. Seeing Christ in each preborn person residing in the womb was a challenge of charity. But I discerned this to be my path of love.

As I prayed before the Blessed Sacrament, I considered and wrestled with many different and good ways to serve the abandoned little ones: politics, education (including chastity education), post-abortion healing, crisis pregnancy counseling/aid, maternity homes, activism and advocacy. I felt drawn to serve the victims directly and personally. I sensed Jesus present at the abortion mill as if it were Calvary. Naturally, I was to become involved primarily in sidewalk counseling and rescue. This was a very direct, personal, practical, urgent, proportionate mission of charity. But this was not an easy vocation. Calvary is a lonely place. It is difficult to love an invisible person. It is difficult to try and help mothers and fathers who do not want help. It is difficult when there is no religious community that focuses on these abandoned ones as their primary apostolate. It is difficult to love a human being in the womb who is just about to be murdered, especially as the direct result of a decision of his or her parents.

What is your response to people who are critical of “Rescue?”

I respond to people who oppose rescue missions with patience and prayer. I try to explain that it is God’s command to directly rescue these innocents who are about to be killed. We follow God’s command, not the prudential or political calculus of human beings. We do the most we can do when we obey God’s will. We perceive God is calling us to rescue. We see Christ in the baby.
Have you experienced pushback from the pro-life community, and if so, how do you deal with it?

Yes. There is some pushback. I think it often arises from a lack of understanding about Catholic action, biblical mandates, and the philosophy of non-violence. I also think people oppose us on prudential or strategic grounds, favoring their own approach. We are all tempted to think “our way is best.” Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I think good people are afraid. Fear is a huge problem. It is human to want to hold onto your freedom, your possessions, your way of living, etc. Engaging in rescue runs the risk of an evil government taking those things away. I think many prolifers do not want to see how evil our government is, and how federal agencies are deeply involved in child sacrifice. In a word: denial. I am not angry or upset with such prolifers; I fully understand their thinking. I too do not fully understand everything about God’s will. I too suffer from thinking “my way” is “the way.” I am also subject to temptations to fear. I am human. My fellow prolifers are human. Rescuers need to be patient, do our best to explain our mission, act with integrity, and practice charity towards those good people who push back against us. We must pray for them.

How are you continuing pro-life work inside prison, and what is your response to people who say you could be doing more pro-life work outside of prison?

In prison, the rescuer is not serving the preborn in a practical, proximate, and personal way, but rather in a spiritual and personal way. It is a gift of self. It is a hidden gift of sacrificial love, reparation, and intercession. When people say, “You could do more out of jail,” they are failing to recognize that these rescue efforts are works of love, not activism. When I hear them say, “You could do more if you didn’t rescue,” I think they are forgetting the particularity, and unique unrepeatable reality of that ONE child, that ONE mother, and that ONE father we are called to minister to and provide with a concrete proportionate witness to Truth. Rescuers take the most abandoned preborn babies, the poorest of the poor, as our friends. We see Christ in the baby, the mother, and the father, who are in imminent danger. Rescue has to be understood as an act of love. Christian sacrificial love.

I wonder if more people would rescue if it weren’t illegal and did not carry any specter of sacrifice. The sacrifice, however, is where the real spiritual power is in combating a demonic holocaust. This is a spiritual battle in its essence, not a political battle. In this war the ultimate weapon is love. There are many ways to love. God calls many people to love the preborn and their parents in many beautiful ways. Rescuers hold onto Christ and His Word: “No greater love has a man than this, but to lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:3)

Calvary, as I said before, is lonely. This is partly due to fear and a lack of understanding concerning those who seek to live in solidarity with the abandoned. This loneliness accompanies the rescuer through life. Family, friends, prolifers, and even Church leaders fear this mission or do not understand it. That’s okay. It adds to the sacrifice and our alignment with the preborn, who are often loved in an impersonal way and at a distance. In a very, very small way, we share in their loneliness and their isolation.

In jail or prison, we may be literally alone. Our cell can be like a womb of sorts. We may be separated from all of our fellow rescuers. We may see our prison as our mystical “monastery,” where we seek to live for Christ and His abandoned babies. Here we endeavor to pray, watch, wait, intercede, suffer, and stay with Christ. The potential for missionary service in lockup is 24/7. Prison is like a cloistered monastery: The jail clothes are our habit. The jail schedule is our horarium.* The guards are our superiors. The inmates are our fellow novices. It is not an easy mission. But we all try our best to make of prison a place to practice faith, hope and charity.

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*A horarium is a Latin word for schedule typically used in monasteries.

How do you keep hope alive?

I keep hope alive in prison by recognizing that everything is a gift from God. Each day, all 24 hours are offered as resistance to the holocaust. With grace, every moment can become an opportunity for prayer and reparation. By grace, everything in me can fight against the spiritual evil of human sacrifice. I can offer my restless sleep in a hot cell block. Humiliating strip searches. Annoyingly loud and foul language. The rude guards’ troubling behavior. Nasty indigestion from eating weird prison food. With the Lord’s love, every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year can be used for the God-given mission to convert souls and save the most vulnerable. His goodness and love are the source of my hope. Nothing happens without Almighty God’s permission. Everything He sends me can be offered for love. There is hope hidden in every moment. As long as we have strength to fight the good fight of faith, hope lives. Praying the Psalms, reading about the saints, silent contemplation, looking at the blue sky, attending Bible studies with fellow inmates, the Rosary, and most especially going to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: All of these are gifts that allow this hope to grow and help me to remember that prison is my monastery and sanctified time is my way to hasten the end to the holocaust. Please pray for us imprisoned rescuers to never lose hope.

How has prison made you more pro-life?

Incarceration has helped me to become more pro-life because here in prison I have met MANY men who have been spiritually and psychologically harmed by the horrors of abortion. Several men have told me about their situations. Some men have wanted to love their baby, but their girlfriend murdered their child. Some guys have seen how the abortion has hurt the women they care about and how it has changed them and their relationships for the worse. Some ex-fathers have shared how they thought killing their baby was the “right thing to do” at the time, but later have regrets. Other guys, who do not regret their abortions, seem very hard-hearted and cold. Nearly all of these various men I have met are dealing with substance abuse issues and mental health problems. I feel very bad for them all. Abortion destroys a tiny person living in the womb. But it also destroys the moms and the dads who participated in this decision to impose death on an innocent baby. In prison, one sees even more clearly how this holocaust is destroying not just lives, but our society too. Prison also teaches one that life is sacred. It is fragile. It is vulnerable. But it is good.

Thank you so much for your time, Will Goodman, it was a pleasure to interview you!

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If you would like to write a letter to Will Goodman, please print a letter and use a pre-stamped white envelope. His address is:
William Goodman 93822-509
FCI Danbury Federal Correctional Institution
Route 37
Danbury, CT 06811

The 2013 Live Action video, and the October 2020 rescue inspired by it, surely saved some children from the clutches of Cesare Santangelo. But, tragically, not all. In March 2022, Handy and some colleagues (Will was not among them) made the gruesome discovery of one hundred and fifteen fetal remains in the process of being disposed of by Santangelo’s clinic. Five of the children were significantly larger than the others. One child, later named Christopher X, was more than thirty weeks along in his fetal development. Another, later named Harriet, appeared to have been subjected to a partial-birth abortion.

There are photos of these children, these victims of Cesare Santangelo. There is a video of Santangelo describing what he does to them. However, at the trial of the five rescuers who interrupted Santangelo’s business nearly three years ago, none of this was allowed to be presented in court. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that since Santangelo had committed no crimes as far as the Live Action video could demonstrate, “admitting the video would create a ‘minitrial’ on the [Santangelo] clinic, shifting the jury’s focus from Defendants’ charged conduct to the conduct of the clinic and doctor eight years prior.” Therefore, she also ruled, the photos of children whom Santangelo had maimed and thrown out with the trash could not be shown, either.

In other words, the trial must not be about what really goes on in abortion clinics. The truth, articulated in the video by the abortionist himself, and demonstrated in the images of those he had killed, must be completely denied. The contrast here is most striking. Will Goodman and the others were convicted of violating the FACE Act. The only way this judicial outcome could have been achieved, Judge Kollar-Kotelly seemed to understand, was to prevent the jury (some of whom were admitted Planned Parenthood donors) from seeing the faces of the victims the FACE Act helps condemn to death.

—Jason Morgan, “Justice Is Blinded,” humanlifereview.com Sept 6, 2023