(CP) President Donald Trump has signed an official pardon for about two dozen pro-life activists who the Biden administration prosecuted for unlawfully protesting at abortion clinics.
Trump signed the order on Thursday, the eve of the 2025 March for Life, granting pardons to the activists who had been given sentences including prison time for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
“Twenty-three people who were prosecuted,” Trump commented as he signed the official pardon. “They mustn’t have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people. They mustn’t have been prosecuted. This is an ideal honor to sign this.”
Pro-life advocacy groups cheered Trump’s decision to pardon the pro-life activists.
“We thank President Trump for immediately delivering on his promise to free pro-life protesters who [were] targeted and imprisoned by [President Joe] Biden’s Department of Justice. Pro-life mothers, grandmothers and even Eva Edl, a Communist prison camp survivor, were thrown in jail for peacefully protesting abortion,” said Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser in a statement Thursday.
“As if that weren’t enough, aggressive sentences were handed down, like five years for Lauren Handy who sought to show evidence of late-term and potentially illegal abortions within the nation’s capital,” she added.
In an announcement to The Christian Post, CatholicVote’s Catholic Accountability Project Director Tommy Valentine declared, “President Trump’s pardon today of pro-life activists unjustly imprisoned under President Biden is an ideal credit to his legacy.”
Days before Trump was inaugurated, lawyers with the Thomas More Society sent a letter to Trump urging him to pardon 21 pro-life activists facing federal charges under the Biden administration. Those activists are Joan Bell, Coleman Boyd, Joel Curry, Jonathan Darnel, Eva Edl, Chester Gallagher, William Goodman, Dennis Green, Lauren Handy, Paulette Harlow, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, Jean Marshall, Fr. Fidelis Moscinski, Justin Phillips, Paul Place, Paul Vaughn, Bevelyn Beatty Williams, Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow and James Zastrow.
“Today, freedom rings in our great nation,” Thomas More Society Senior Counsel Steve Crampton remarked. “The heroic peaceful pro-lifers unjustly imprisoned by Biden’s Justice Department will now be freed and in a position to return home to their families, eat a family meal, and revel in the liberty that ought to have never been taken from them in the primary place.
“These heroic peaceful pro-lifers were treated shamefully by Biden’s DOJ, with a lot of them branded felons and losing many rights that we take without any consideration as American residents. Today, their precious freedom is restored. What happened to them can never be erased, but today’s pardons are an enormous step towards restoring justice. Thank you to President Trump and his team for righting these grievous wrongs of the previous administration.”
Thomas More Society Senior Vice President and Head of Litigation Peter Breen offered similar evaluation in a statement reacting to the event.
“Today is a recent day for the pardoned pro-life advocates who’ve suffered FBI raids, federal prosecutions, and severe punishment for peacefully and courageously witnessing for all times,” Breen said. “We thank President Trump for keeping his promise to those pro-life moms, fathers, grandparents, pastors, and priests.”
Troy Miller, president of National Religious Broadcasters, issued a statement praising Trump’s “pardon of 23 Americans unjustly thrown behind bars for peacefully protesting outside abortion clinics, and thank him for his swift motion on this critical matter.” He also called for “the repeal of the flawed FACE Act to finish the weaponization and abuse of this law against Christians once and for all”.
The FACE Act, the law used to prosecute the activists, was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994 in response to a wave of violence against abortion clinics.
The measure bans any threats of violence or other threats which are made with the intention of interfering with the work of reproductive health care providers, be it abortion or other services.
“We simply cannot — we must not — proceed to permit the attacks, the incidents of arson, the campaigns of intimidation upon law-abiding residents that has given rise to this law,” stated Clinton in 1994.
“No person in search of medical care, no physician providing that care should must endure harassments or threats or obstruction or intimidation and even murder from vigilantes who take the law into their very own hands because they think they know what the law must be.”
Pro-choice groups just like the National Abortion Federation argue that the laws not only protects abortion clinics but still allows pro-life activists to peacefully exhibit at facilities.
“FACE protects protesters’ First Amendment right to free speech,” claimed NAF in a position paper. “Clinic protesters remain free to conduct peaceful protest, including singing hymns, praying, carrying signs, walking picket lines and distributing anti-abortion materials outside of clinics.”
Many, especially conservative politicians and pro-life groups, have argued that the laws has been abused to focus on anti-abortion advocates who’re peacefully demonstrating at clinics.
