Donald Trump signed pardons for 23 anti-abortion activists who were convicted for violating a federal law that makes it a crime to block entrances to reproductive health clinics.
The pardon list includes Lauren Handy, who is serving a nearly five-year prison sentence after forcing her way inside a Washington, D.C., clinic in 2020 and using ropes, bike blocks and chains to stop patients from entering — actions that anti-abortion groups and Republican officials have characterized as peaceful protests unjustly prosecuted by a politically motivated administration.
Their convictions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act during Joe Biden’s presidency were fiercely condemned by anti-abortion organizations and right-wing legal groups, which pressed Trump for Thursday’s pardon.
Handy, in an unrelated case, made headlines after federal authorities discovered fetal remains in her apartment in March 2022. She reportedly stole the remains from a medical waste truck parked outside a clinic. No charges were ever filed in that case and the incident was not part of the investigation leading to her conviction under the FACE Act.
“This is a great honor to sign this,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Thursday. “They should not have been prosecuted … Ridiculous.”
Steve Crampton, senior counsel with the anti-abortion advocacy group Thomas More Society, called the pardons a “huge step towards restoring justice.”
The pardons were issued one day before thousands of anti-abortion activists gather in Washington for the annual March for Life event, which marks the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 decision in Roe v Wade, which affirmed a constitutional right to abortion care. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned that decision in 2022, upending access to care for tens of millions of women across the country.
Trump and Vice President JD Vance are expected to deliver remarks at Friday’s event.
Prosecutions in the Washington case marked the first time that the Department of Justice charged anti-abortion activists under the FACE Act, which was enacted in the early 1990s in response to a wave of violent threats towards reproductive healthcare providers and patients.
The violence reached a peak in 1993, when fundamentalist Christian activist Michael Griffin fatally shot physician David Gunn outside a Florida clinic. That same year, anti-abortion activist Shelley Shannon was convicted for the attempted murder of George Tiller, who operated a clinic in Kansas. In 2009, Tiller was murdered by anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder during a Sunday service at Tiller’s church.
The FACE Act makes it a crime to damage or destroy facilities or to intimidate or interfere with anyone obtaining or providing reproductive healthcare.
This week, House Republican Chip Roy filed legislation to revoke the law, which he claims has been “weaponized against pro-life Americans” for “for speaking out and standing up for life.” But the FACE Act has also been used to prosecute abortion rights demonstrators — as recently as last year — who have targeted so-called crisis pregnancy centers.
Senator Josh Hawley grilled Trump’s attorney general nominee Pam Bondi on whether her Department of Justice would ever pursue similar charges.
“Will you protect churches and pregnancy care centers when they are targeted for violence, when they are targeted for intimidation?” Hawley asked during her Senate confirmation hearing last week. He also asked if she would “stop the disparate treatment of Americans on the basis of religious faith” and “stop the deliberate persecution of pro-life Americans for nothing more than their pro-life beliefs.”
She said “yes” to both.
Trump issued the pardons as House lawmakers voted 217-to-204 on a bill that would criminalize healthcare providers’ failure to care for an infant that is “born alive” after an abortion — which would be infanticide, and is already plainly illegal. Democrats have blasted the legislation as a publicity stunt; less than 1 percent of abortions occur within the final weeks of a pregnancy, and virtually all are the result of dire medical conditions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It was the second time in two years that the bill was introduced in the Republican-led House. It has no chance of passage in the Senate, where Democrats blocked the bill from coming up for a vote on Wednesday.
