On the eve of the March for Life in Washington, which marks the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, newly inaugurated president Donald Trump pardoned nearly two dozen pro-life protestors who were convicted of Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act violations under the Biden administration. Trump had promised to help the convicted protestors during his campaign.
For blocking abortion clinic access, the protestors faced sentences of up to ten years under the charges because after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Department of Justice took the new approach of adding civil rights conspiracy charges to the cases. Some of the pardoned were in the middle of serving years-long sentences.
The details of the cases vary; in one clinic blockade a protestor caused a nurse to sprain her ankle, while in others the protestors did peaceful sit-ins with prayer outside a clinic. One protestor was sentenced to three years for livestreaming a clinic blockade, though he did not enter the clinic.
The number pardoned, 23, is according to a White House aide; documentation has not been publicly released. Attorneys had petitioned for the pardon of 21 protestors: 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, Fidelis Moscinski, Justin Phillips, Paul Place, Paul Vaughn, Bevelyn Beatty Williams, Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, and James Zastrow.
Some of the convicted were older: Joan Bell is 76, Jean Marshall is 74, and Eva Edl is 89. Bell and Edl are long-time advocates of the strategy of clinic blockades as a form of pro-life protest, seeing it as akin to the direct action of the Civil Rights Movement. Both have been arrested many times.
Bell is considered one of the originators of what pro-lifers call “rescue” activism. Operation Rescue, which used this strategy, pledged nonviolence, but extremist acts of violence against abortion providers led to the passage of the FACE Act in 1994.
The FACE Act covers a spectrum of activism around clinics—any intimidation or interference with “providing reproductive health services.”
Clinic blockades have declined since the law’s passage, but the number of pro-life protestors at clinics has increased in recent years. That activism has resulted in a number of US Supreme Court cases considering “bubble zone” regulations that establish a radius around a clinic that protestors cannot enter. The court in December declined to hear a challenge to a bubble zone regulation in New York.
In its January 14 letter petitioning for the pardons of the protestors, Thomas More Society attorneys said their clients had been victims of the “weaponization of the Justice Department by the Biden Administration.”
“While Biden’s prosecutors almost entirely ignored the firebombing and vandalism of hundreds of pro-life churches and pregnancy centers, they viciously pursued pro-life Americans,” the lawyers wrote.
In 2023, the Biden administration filed FACE Act charges against four individuals who attacked a pregnancy center, but it had prosecuted more cases against pro-life protestors.
Speaking briefly on the South Lawn of the White House Friday, Trump called the federal cases “persecution.”
“They will be released and they’ll be out very shortly,” he said.
