(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 that were prosecuted," Trump commented as he signed the official pardon. "They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted. This is a great 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 moms, 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 were not enough, aggressive sentences were handed down, like five years for Lauren Handy who sought to expose evidence of late-term and potentially illegal abortions in the nation's capital," she added.
In a statement 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 a great 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 able to return home to their families, eat a family meal, and enjoy the freedom that should have never been taken from them in the first place.
"These heroic peaceful pro-lifers were treated shamefully by Biden's DOJ, with many of them branded felons and losing many rights that we take for granted as American citizens. Today, their precious freedom is restored. What happened to them can never be erased, but today's pardons are a huge 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 analysis in a statement reacting to the development.
"Today is a new day for the pardoned pro-life advocates who have suffered FBI raids, federal prosecutions, and severe punishment for peacefully and courageously witnessing for life," Breen said. "We thank President Trump for keeping his promise to these pro-life mothers, 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 action on this critical matter." He also called for "the repeal of the flawed FACE Act to end 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 that 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 — continue to allow the attacks, the incidents of arson, the campaigns of intimidation upon law-abiding citizens that has given rise to this law," stated Clinton in 1994.
"No person seeking medical care, no physician providing that care should have to endure harassments or threats or obstruction or intimidation or even murder from vigilantes who take the law into their own hands because they think they know what the law ought to be."
Pro-choice groups like the National Abortion Federation argue that the legislation not only protects abortion clinics but still allows pro-life activists to peacefully demonstrate 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 legislation has been abused to target anti-abortion advocates who are peacefully demonstrating at clinics.
