A recently pardoned pro-life activist says President Trump’s sweeping clemency for imprisoned demonstrators could actually thwart efforts to repeal the federal law that has targeted the anti-abortion movement.
Jonathan Darnel, who was among the two dozen pro-life demonstrators pardoned last week, says Mr. Trump’s actions wipe away any chance for activists to overturn the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act in court by removing their cases from judicial records.
He also says activists haven’t received word from the Trump administration about firing the FBI agents and prosecutors involved in building cases against pro-lifers who sometimes blockaded clinics, which was one of the prisoners’ main demands.
The Department of Justice did say it is curtailing prosecutions of the statute, which it said was an example of the “weaponization” of law enforcement.
It’s a positive step, Mr. Darnel says, but such a directive could be easily reversed once another Democratic president takes office in the future.
That leaves it up to Congress to end the law. Mr. Darnel argues that can be a fickle strategy since federal lawmakers are hesitant to get behind such a volatile issue.
“FACE ought to be annihilated on all fronts,” Mr. Darnel told The Washington Times. “If it can be repealed, fantastic, that’s Congress’s job anyway, but we all know that’s very hard to get Congress to agree on anything, especially something radical like that, even if they are Republicans. So now we’re down — we had three options. Now we’re down to maybe one.”
Enacted in 1994, the FACE Act was originally intended to apply to blockades at abortion clinics and pro-life pregnancy centers, but the Justice Department under former President Joseph R. Biden prosecuted anti-abortion protesters who sometimes only prayed outside such clinics.
Since the act’s passage, only six of the 211 prosecutions brought under the law have been brought against pro-choice protesters, according to federal data cited by lawmakers. That’s despite nearly 100 attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers after the landmark Roe v. Wade case was overturned in June 2022.
Mr. Darnel, 43, spent more than a year in prison following his conviction on FACE Act charges of infiltrating and blocking a D.C. abortion clinic in 2020.
Nine other activists were sentenced to federal prison in the same demonstration, including a nearly five-year prison term for Lauren Handy, a prominent figure in the anti-abortion movement who was found with five fetuses in her D.C. home when she was charged.
Mr. Darnel said pro-life leaders should have arranged an appellate court case involving an imprisoned activist, potentially giving the conservative-led Supreme Court a chance to overturn the law.
Rep. Chip Roy, Texas Republican, introduced a bill last week to repeal the FACE Act, which he said was “being used to politically target, arrest, and jail pro-life Americans for speaking out and standing up for life.”
“Now that we have a Republican trifecta in the House, Senate and White House, Congress should move quickly to repeal this law and ensure that no future president can weaponize it against pro-lifers ever again,” Mr. Roy said in a press release.
Conservative lawmakers and activists’ interest in repealing the FACE Act grew in large part due to the prosecution of elderly defendants.
Eva Edl, an 89-year-old wheelchair user and Soviet concentration camp survivor, faced up to 11 years behind bars after being found guilty for her role in a Michigan blockade in 2020.
And Paulette Harlow was 75 when she was given a two-year prison sentence in the District last year. Her husband spoke before the sentencing to say he feared his ailing wife may die in prison, according to pro-life news site LiveAction.
Mr. Trump pardoned both women, but their treatment by federal authorities enraged anti-abortion organizers, who said the Biden Justice Department was being unnecessarily heavy-handed.
“That stuff should be highlighted and stigmatized,” Mr. Darnel told The Times. “I wish there was a way to get the footage from our sentencing, our trials, online and show people what actually happens during a federal trial.”
If the FACE Act is not repealed and the prosecutions resume, he suggested pro-life states or counties declare themselves as “sanctuaries” to shield anti-abortion demonstrators from the federal judiciary.
It would be similar to the sanctuary city model many Democrat-run jurisdictions adopted to safeguard illegal immigrants from deportations. But Mr. Darnel acknowledged that would be a “very radical” approach.
• Valerie Richardson contributed to this story.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.