A pro-life advocate said that President Donald Trump’s pardons of nearly two dozen pro-life protesters was a “powerful” rebuke to the weaponization of government.
Thomas More Society Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation Peter Breen testified Tuesday before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight about the Biden administration’s prosecution of peaceful pro-life protesters. Breen urged the lawmakers to take action to repeal the FACE Act, a Clinton-era law that makes it a federal crime to block an entrance to an abortion facility.
“The Biden DOJ engaged in a systematic campaign to abuse the power of the federal government against pro-life advocates, while that same DOJ ignored hundreds of acts of vandalism and violence against pro-life churches, pregnancy help centers, and other advocates,” Breen said.
The Thomas More Society represented several of the pro-life defendants who were prosecuted under Biden and later urged the Trump administration to issue pardons.
On his fourth day in office, Trump pardoned 23 of the pro-lifers targeted by Biden, including multiple people who were serving years-long prison sentences.
“They should not have been prosecuted,” Trump said as he signed the order. “Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted. This is a great honor to sign this.”
Breen said that the pardons were a “powerful message.”
“On behalf of our clients and the pro-life movement as whole, we are thankful to President Trump for his recent pardons and to the members of this House who supported that effort,” he said. “Those pardons sent a powerful message to the country—and especially to the millions of Americans in the pro-life movement—that the federal government should not be weaponized against Americans because of their sincere beliefs in the sanctity of human life.”
During his testimony, Breen discussed the case of Paul Vaughn, a pro-life father of 11 pardoned by Trump. In 2022, armed FBI agents raided Vaughn’s rural Tennessee home while his children were waiting to go to school. Vaughn was present at a pro-life protest in Tennessee in 2021 where he did not block entry into the abortion facility, but spoke with police and other protesters.
Breen urged the lawmakers to repeal the FACE Act, saying that a “Sword of Damocles” hung over pro-life advocates across the country as long as there was a possibility that future administrations could take a similar aggressive prosecutorial approach as the Biden administration.