Michelle Goldberg Goldberg failed to consider the perspectives of either pro-life rescuers or the preborn children who perished inside Santangelo’s abortion mill.

Last month, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg criticized President Trump’s pardons of 23 pro-lifers, convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. She focused on the October 2020 rescue at the Washington Surgi-Center in the District of Columbia. “A group of activists shoved their way into the waiting room” and caused a nurse to sprain her ankle “while struggling unsuccessfully to hold the door shut against one of them,” Goldberg wrote. “One patient, . . . finding out that her fetus had a grave and almost certainly fatal abnormality, had already taken a labor-inducing drug, sometimes used in later abortions. She and her husband pleaded with the activists to let them in. Then she collapsed in pain in front of them.”

Both of us attended the trial of these pro-lifers in a D.C. federal court and watched security camera videos of what took place. We can set the record straight. It was not pro-lifers who were violent that day — it was the abortion facility staff. When three of the elderly pro-lifers attempted to enter the clinic, video shows a nurse charging the door and the facility manager repeatedly striking and jabbing the pro-lifers with a broom handle — seeking to force them back. Yes, while trying to keep the pro-lifers out, the nurse sprained her ankle, but in a melee that clinic staff initiated, in their aggression against the pro-lifers. Incidentally, none of the pro-lifers were ever charged with assault.

As for the woman who collapsed, during the trial she testified that she and her husband aborted their “very much wanted” unborn child because of congenital abnormalities. She and her husband had returned to Cesare Santangelo’s abortion center to deliver a dead baby who the day before was killed by a shot of digoxin. Videos show the woman experiencing labor pains and physically distressed. The pro-lifers tried to counsel the couple and urged them to call 911, as Santangelo was not even present at the clinic. Pro-lifers also urged clinic staff to call 911, but they refused. One of the rescuers, Jean Marshall, a retired registered nurse, consoled and comforted the woman. Video shows Jean gently stroking the woman’s cheek in a gesture of compassion.

While abortion advocates frequently accuse pro-lifers of violence, they never discuss the violence of abortion. Let’s get real. Santangelo kills healthy unborn children through the ninth month of pregnancy. On March 25, 2022, Terrisa Bukovinac and Lauren Handy stood outside Santangelo’s clinic, where a driver of the medical waste van gave them the bodies of 115 aborted children. Five of them, stuffed into plastic tubs, were clearly late-term abortions — babies so large that they were certainly killed well into the second trimester, and very possibly the third. The open eye of one baby girl, whom they named Harriet, blankly stares back at whoever dares look at her. “The Five” were given to the office of the D.C. medical examiner for examination. There they still remain, un-autopsied and unburied.

Will Goodman, one of the pardoned pro-lifers, stated: “Our preborn sisters and brothers continue to face the death penalty daily. The injustice they suffer is far greater than any injustice we endured. For the victims of abortion there is no reprieve, there is no release — there is no pardon for them.” It is sad, but not surprising, that Goldberg failed to consider the perspectives of either the pro-life rescuers or the preborn children who perished inside Santangelo’s abortion mill that day.