President Donald Trump pardoned 23 pro-lifers who were convicted for actions including praying outside abortion clinics and encouraging women in unplanned pregnancies to choose life.
The pardons came one day before the 52nd annual March for Life in Washington, D.C.
Since 2021, the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice Department has brought criminal or civil cases under the Freedom of Clinic Access, or FACE Act, against at least 50 pro-life advocates. Twenty-one were convicted and ten are incarcerated. Three were imprisoned and released.
Former President Joe Biden’s critics accused him and his DOJ of weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-lifers while failing to charge pro-abortion criminals for the hundreds of attacks on pregnancy resource centers since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating Roe would soon be overturned.
Trump indicated during his campaign he would pardon these pro-lifers quickly upon assuming office.
“Many people are in jail over this,” Trump said in June at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference. “We’re going to get that taken care of immediately [on the] first day.”
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, both Republicans, are leading the charge in Congress to repeal the FACE Act so it can’t be weaponized against pro-lifers in future Democrat administrations. Ninety-seven percent of FACE Act prosecutions between the years of 1994-2024 were initiated against pro-life Americans.
Some of the convicted pro-life activists are represented by the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based conservative public interest law firm. The firm’s general counsel, Andrew Bath, said the law has been “egregiously abused” and “weaponized.
This is a breaking news article and it may be updated.