Donald Trump announced Thursday he would pardon anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading abortion clinic entrances. Trump called it “a great honor to sign this”.
“They should not have been prosecuted,” he said as he signed pardons for “peaceful pro-life protesters”.
The people pardoned were involved in the October 2020 invasion and blockade of a Washington clinic.
Lauren Handy was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for leading the blockade by directing blockaders to link themselves together with locks and chains to block the clinic’s doors. A nurse sprained her ankle when one person pushed her while she was entering the clinic, and a woman was accosted by another blockader while having labor pains, prosecutors said. Police found five fetuses in Handy’s home after she was indicted.
Trump pardoned Handy and her nine co-defendants: Jonathan Darnel of Virginia; Jay Smith, John Hinshaw and William Goodman, all of New York; Joan Bell of New Jersey; Paulette Harlow and Jean Marshall, both of Massachusetts; Heather Idoni of Michigan; and Herb Geraghty of Pennsylvania.
In the first week of Trump’s presidency, anti-abortion advocates have ramped up calls for Trump to pardon protesters charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which is designed to protect abortion clinics from obstruction and threats. The 1994 law was passed during a time when clinic protests and blockades were on the rise, as was violence against abortion providers, such as the murder of Dr David Gunn in 1993.
Trump specifically mentioned Harlow in a June speech criticizing Joe Biden’s Department of Justice for pursuing charges against protesters involved in blockades.
“Many people are in jail over this,” he said in June, adding: ”We’re going to get that taken care of immediately.”
Abortion-rights advocates slammed Trump’s pardons as evidence of his opposition to abortion access, despite his vague, contradictory statements on the issue as he attempted to find a middle ground on the campaign trail between anti-abortion allies and the majority of Americans who support abortion rights.
“Donald Trump on the campaign trail tried to have it both ways – bragging about his role in overturning Roe v Wade while saying he wasn’t going to take action on abortion,” said Ryan Stitzlein, vice-president of political and government relations for the national abortion rights organization Reproductive Freedom for All. “We never believed that that was true, and this shows us that we were right.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, thanked Trump for “immediately delivering on his promise” to pardon the protesters, arguing their prosecutions had been political.
In a January letter to Trump, the legal group the Thomas More Society argued that the Face Act defendants they represented had been “unjustly imprisoned”. The group had assured the defendants that Trump would review their cases and pardon them when he took office, according to the letter.
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“Today, freedom rings in our great nation,” said Steve Crampton, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, adding: “What happened to them can never be erased, but today’s pardons are a huge step towards restoring justice.”
The Republican senator Josh Hawley, among Trump’s most loyal supporters, called the prosecution of anti-abortion protesters “a grotesque assault on the principles of this country” and urged Trump to pardon them while reading the stories of such anti-abortion protesters on the Senate floor Thursday. He highlighted Eva Edl, who was involved in a 2021 Tennessee clinic blockade and whose story has garnered attention from the largest national anti-abortion groups.
Hawley said he “had a great conversation” Thursday morning with Trump about the protesters.
The news of the pardons comes before Friday’s annual anti-abortion protest March for Life in Washington, where the president is expected to address the crowd in a video.