Trump pardons anti-abortion activists who blocked clinic entrances

CHICAGO (AP) — President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will pardon anti-abortion activists convicted of blocking entrances to abortion clinics.

Trump called it “a great honor to sign this.”

“They should not have been prosecuted,” he said while signing the pardon for the “peaceful pro-life protesters.”

Those pardoned were involved in October 2020 Invasion and blockade of a Washington clinic.

Lauren Handy was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for leading the blockade by ordering the blockaders to bind themselves with locks and chains to block the clinic doors. A nurse sprained her ankle when someone pushed her while entering the clinic, and a woman was accosted by another blocker while experiencing labor pains, prosecutors said. Police found five fetuses in Handy’s home after he was charged.

Trump pardoned Handy and his 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, abortion supporters have increased calls for Trump to pardon protesters accused of violating the law. Law on freedom of access to clinic entranceswhich aims to protect abortion clinics from obstruction and threats. The 1994 law was passed at a time of increasing protests and clinic blockades. violence against abortion providerslike the murder of Dr. David Gunn in 1993.

Trump specifically mentioned Harlow in a June speech criticizing former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department for filing charges against protesters involved in blockades.

“Many people are in prison because of this,” he said in June, adding: “We are going to fix this immediately.” »

Abortion rights advocates have criticized Trump’s pardons, calling them evidence of his opposition to abortion access, despite his vague and contradictory statements on the issue as he attempted to find a happy medium on the electoral campaign between anti-abortion allies and majority of Americans who support the right to abortion.

“Donald Trump, on the campaign trail, tried to have it both ways: bragging about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade while saying he wouldn’t act on abortion,” Ryan said Stitzlein, vice president of policy and government relations for the national abortion rights organization Reproductive Freedom for All. “We never believed it was true, and this shows us we were right.”

SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser thanked Trump for “immediately keeping his promise” to pardon the protesters, arguing that their prosecution was political.

Legal group Thomas More Society argued that the FACE Act defendants they represent were “unjustly imprisoned” in legal proceedings. January letter to Trump. The group had assured the defendants that Trump would review their case and grant them clemency when he took office, according to the letter.

“Today, freedom resonates throughout our great nation,” Steve Crampton, senior attorney for the Thomas More Society, said Thursday, adding, “What happened to them can never be erased, but today’s pardons constitute a big step towards the restoration of justice.”

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, one of Trump’s most loyal supporters, called the prosecution of anti-abortion protesters a “grotesque attack on the principles of this country” and urged Trump to pardon them by reading the stories of these anti-abortion demonstrators in the Senate. floor Thursday. He emphasized Eva Edlwho was involved in the blockade of a Tennessee clinic in 2021 and whose story attracted the attention of the nation’s largest anti-abortion groups.

Hawley said he “had a great conversation” Thursday morning with Trump about the protesters.

News of the pardons comes ahead of Friday’s annual anti-abortion protest, the March for Life in Washington, where the president is expected to address the crowd in a video.