Lauren Handy

Lauren Handy (born 16 November 1993)is an American anti-abortion activist.

Handy grew up as a Southern Baptist.

Her father is a painter.

She was molested as a child by a non-family member.

She attended Central Virginia Community College with the intent of working in a museum as an art historian.

While there, she was both pro-life and agnostic.

A student at nearby Liberty University invited her to go sidewalk counseling.

Handy was moved by the experience of seeing women walking into the abortion facility to have abortions, and started to attend church several days a week.

Six weeks later she skipped her final exams, dropped out of school, sold all her belongings, and moved to California to become a full-time activist with Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust.

She has lived with several congregations of the Missionaries of Charity, including one in Haiti, where she worked in a hospice.

Handy is an anarcho-mutualist.

Handy began entering abortion facilities to speak to pregnant women in 2013.

She stands outside a Washington D.C. Planned Parenthood facility three or four times a week, telling people that "there is free help available for you and your family."

She claims to have helped over 800 families chose to give birth rather than have an abortion.

One abortionist sued Handy for loss of revenue after she helped 12 women find the resources they needed and the women decided not to have abortions.

Handy has discovered the bodies of aborted children in dumpsters behind abortion facilities and given them proper burials.

She has been arrested more than 30 times during her activism.

Charges are often dropped, or sentences suspended.

She purposely does not earn wages, so her wages cannot be garnished in a lawsuit.

She supports herself with donations and occasional graphic design jobs.

Handy was convicted in of trespassing and resisting arrest for her actions at a "pink rose rescue" in Flint, Michigan.

She spent four days in jail.

In 2021, Handy conducted a pink rose rescue at an Alexandria, Virginia, abortion facility.

During the rescue, she and five others entered the waiting room of the facility and handed pink roses to women who were scheduled to undergo abortions.

Along with the roses, the women were given information on resources available to them and their children, and information on alternatives to abortion.

Protesters will sometimes go limp, forcing police officers to lift their bodies onto stretchers to remove them.

According to the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, five women chose not to have abortions as a result of the pink rose rescue.

Handy was sentenced to 30 days in prison for trespassing.

In 2017, Handy founded Mercy Missions, a mutual aid organization.

Mercy Missions helps families and mothers in crisis pregnancies and provides survival aid for the homeless.

Handy is currently the Director of Activism for the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising.

Handy has been involved with a number of activist organizations.

Handy has been in a leadership role of the Red Rose Rescue movement since its founding.

As a sidewalk counselor, Handy employs an LGBT+ inclusive message and has been to more than 100 abortion facilities in more than 32 states.

She sometimes will surreptitiously enter a facility, leave literature about alternatives inside, and then leave.

As she believes abortion is an act of violence, and because she wants to interrupt the cycle of violence, Handy employs non-violent principles and tactics.

On October 22, 2020, Handy and four others from the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising blocked access to a facility that performs abortions in Washington D.C. Handy made an appointment at the facility under a fake name.

Once inside, she and the other protesters used their bodies, chains, ropes, and furniture to block the doors.

The protest was livestreamed on Facebook.

Handy and several others were convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.