US President Donald Trump on Thursday pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading or physically obstructing abortion clinic entrances.
Trump remarked while signing the pardon order: “They should not have been prosecuted … Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted. This is a great honor to sign this.”
The activists were convicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which protects participation in reproductive health services from actual or attempted intentional intimidation, interference, injury, or facility property damage. The FACE Act also provides the same protections for participation in exercising religious freedom at a place of religious worship.
The different activists participated in blockading abortion clinic entrances in Washington D.C., Tennessee, Michigan and New York over the past five years. Former President Joe Biden’s administration prosecuted the cases.
Trump’s pardon was prompted after attorneys from the Thomas More Society sent him a pardon petition on behalf of the convicted anti-abortion activists. The Thomas More Society attorneys argued that Congress did not intend the FACE Act to be used against group-oriented peaceable civil disobedience tactics that were “used and celebrated by Dr. Martin Luther King,” such as “peaceful sit-ins at lunch counters — an act of simple trespass.” They argued that Congress intended such tactics would be punishable as mere misdemeanors by the FACE Act even though the Department of Justice under the Biden administration charged the activists with serious 10-year felonies.
The attorneys also cited a recent US Supreme Court case “ruling that a broad reading of a statute must be rejected if it would be ‘novel’ and effectively ‘criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists alike to decades in prison.'” Additionally, the attorneys argued that the FACE Act is facially unconstitutional by being concerned with intrastate non-economic activity, violating the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.
The Thomas More Society further called the prosecutions “witch hunts” after the US Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, where the court held that there is no constitutional right to an abortion. They asserted that the enforcement of the FACE Act violates the First Amendment by not prosecuting under the act “more than 170 incidents of violence against pro-life pregnancy centers and churches nationwide in the wake of the leak of the Dobbs decision,” amounting to viewpoint discriminatory enforcement.
The petition also noted fairness issues with the trial, such as the elimination of pro-life people from the jury and the trial judge not allowing the jury to hear significant evidence of defendants allegedly attempting to stop illegal activity.
The president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, Nancy Northup, condemned Trump’s pardon:
President Trump’s pardons are a get-out-of-jail-free card inviting anti-abortion extremists to step up their attacks on reproductive health clinics with impunity. … Since the news of the pardons, we have heard from abortion providers across the country that they are terrified for the safety of their staff and patients. Even with this law in place, anti-abortion activists have threatened to kill providers, have bombed their clinics, and have harassed their patients.
