Nonprofit law firm helps sidewalk counselor get his life back

Paul Vaughn and his team of abortion sidewalk counselors were present at a Tennessee abortion clinic on March 5, 2021, ready to talk with anyone about to enter.

Vaughn said they simply wanted to pray and make themselves available to those men and women. As it turned out, the only people he talked with that day were two police officers on duty, and their conversation was friendly.

There was no violence from the sidewalk counselors or other pro-life demonstrators who were there. A few people from another pro-life group had staged a hallway sit-in outside the abortion clinic. Those individuals were initially charged with trespassing, but the charges were found to be without merit and dismissed in a local court.

But about a year and a half later, a whole round of repercussions ensued for the pro-lifers.

For Vaughn, that began when FBI agents raided his house at gunpoint and arrested the father of 11 in front of his wife and seven of his children. Suddenly Vaughn was facing up to 10 years in prison under federal charges.

That’s when Stephen Crampton, senior counsel with the Thomas More Society, was asked to help.

The Thomas More Society is a national nonprofit, public-interest law firm that champions life, family and freedom. So Vaughn’s case was a natural for the organization.

The nonprofit provides free legal aid across the country, including in Nebraska. Most recently, in October, a Thomas More Society lawyer testified before the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, criticizing the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services for inaction on reported violations at a Bellevue abortion clinic.

The law firm called Vaughn’s prosecution and his 2024 conviction – based on a law aimed at Klu Klux Klan members – a “deep injustice” from zealous federal prosecutors. Vaughn avoided prison but was sentenced to three years of supervised release, including six months of house arrest.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump pardoned Vaughn and other convicted members of the pro-life movement. But the twists and turns of Vaughn’s story haven’t ended.

Tonight, Nov. 13, he and Crampton will share the story of Vaughn’s ordeal. They will be speaking at the Thomas More Society’s 15th Annual Banquet at the Scott Conference Center in Omaha. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen was also slated to speak.

Vaughn and Crampton spoke with the Catholic Voice by phone in advance of the banquet.

Vaughn discussed the trials and hardships that the zealous prosecution brought to his family and to other pro-life defendants. But they remained prayerful and saw God working through it all.

Paul Vaughn speaks before a congressional subcommittee last year. He and his attorney, Stephen Crampton, testified about a federal law used against Vaughn and other pro-life demonstrators. THOMAS MORE SOCIETY

Immediately after his arrest in October 2022 until his trial in January 2024, Vaughn and members of his sidewalk counseling team, their families and church members went to the federal courthouse in Nashville for prayer meetings the first Saturday of every month.

“We knew their intentions,” he said of the government prosecutors. “We knew they were trying to put us in jail for 10 years.”

Because the federal charges were raised more than 18 months after an event that ended with no local convictions, Vaughn said, “this was nothing but persecution.”

There was no validity to the charges the pro-life activist faced, Crampton said. Vaughn didn’t obstruct or intimidate anyone. 

“I was completely innocent,” Vaughn said, “so I knew that it was all spiritual, that it was all just prosecution and persecution, spiritually speaking, from our government. I knew that in that process that we had to really ask God to intervene. That’s His realm, not mine. So that’s how we approached it.”

Once a month Vaughn drove 90 minutes to the federal courthouse to pray with members of his sidewalk team and others. They also prayed together weekly at his office.

They worshiped, read and sang Psalms, and “just asked God to be glorified in the midst of the trials,” Vaughn said. 

They “leaned into spiritual warfare,” heightening their awareness of “a deeper battle at work and engaging in the spiritual realm to fight it.”

“Of course, the most beautiful thing is seeing God work and writing a story,” he said, “being willing to lay your life down and let Him tell the story He wants to tell.”

And throughout the trial, at every turn, Vaughn said, he saw God glorified.

BECOMING CATHOLIC

When asked about his faith, he described it as “changing and growing.”

Vaughn and his wife, Bethany, grew up as Protestants active with their families in the pro-life movement. Now they are on a path to enter the Catholic Church through the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) and are currently in a catechumen class at a parish in Columbia, Tennessee.

The examples they witnessed from Catholics drew them into the Catholic faith – along with Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae.

The encyclical, which taught God’s plan for marital love and human life, “was a profound statement by the Church that spoke to Protestants and Catholics alike around the world,” Vaughn said.

“While I don’t always see everything perfectly, I think the unity of a voice we speak into a world of discord is a powerful thing and something that just seems eternally sanctioned.”

News accounts assumed Vaughn was Catholic because of his large family.

“I didn’t bother to correct them,” he said.

Catholic Church teaching on suffering helped him embrace what he went through, he said, allowing him to be more like Christ and see what was happening more clearly.

Through frequent Mass attendance, he’s learned to walk more closely with Jesus, to become more like Him.

“The daily liturgy informs you for that purpose,” he said.

BACK TO NORMAL

Vaughn continues his pro-life work, but it’s different now. The Thomas More Society is helping him to resume his former life by filing a countersuit against the federal government. He and Crampton were in negotiations with the Department of Justice before the government shutdown but were to resume those talks once the government reopened.

His family yearns for some normalcy, he said. “We’ve been fairly busy trying to keep a business running and keep the federal government out of our lives for the last couple years. So we’ve not returned completely to normality yet.”

His sidewalk ministry has changed because Tennessee no longer has any abortion clinics. But Planned Parenthood is still there, referring girls and women to nearby states for abortions, so prayer and ministry are still important.

For Crampton, faith is at the heart of his work with the Thomas More Society.

He had formerly worked in civil litigation, with some criminal cases as well.

Thomas More Society attorney Paul Crampton speaks before the congressional subcommittee last year, with the aim of changing a law that targets pro-life demonstrators. THOMAS MORE SOCIETY

“But for several years the Lord really put on my heart that this was the kind of work that I needed to be doing,” said the lawyer, a Protestant who lives in Tupelo, Mississippi. “And once that conviction was placed on my heart, it was as if everything else I did, that I had previously enjoyed quite a bit, suddenly became completely lifeless.

“I sort of equate it to the moth drawn to the flame,” Crampton said. “I could not stay away from this kind of work. I would be most unhappy if I were stuck in the commercial end of practicing law.

“So it has been my joy to work now over 30-plus years in this arena and do what I love to do and represent people as wonderful as Paul Vaughn, these folks that give their lives to the cause. It’s just a privilege to walk alongside them and see them through the fire of litigation and this kind of persecution.”

A GODSEND

Crampton and other attorneys at the Thomas More Society are paid, but their services are provided free to clients. The firm relies on donations to cover costs.

“It’s a wonderful firm to work with,” he said, “really great people, genuinely caring. It’s really a blessing to be able to work alongside these folks.”

The Thomas More Society was an “incredible Godsend,” Vaughn said. “I couldn’t imagine walking through a trial like this without them.”

He encourages people to participate in the work of the Thomas More Society by donating to the public advocacy group.

Its work, Vaughn said, is “bounded in Christian charity,” being Christ to people in legal need.