What to Know About Trump’s Pardons of Pro-Life Protesters

Left-wing pro-life protesters with Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court on June 15, 2022.Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times

President Donald Trump signed a pardon for 23 pro-life demonstrators on Jan. 23, three days after taking office, making good on his campaign promise to address what he called the “weaponization” of the Department of Justice against pro-life demonstrators.

The protesters were prosecuted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. When presented with the pardon, Trump said it was “a great honor to sign this.”

“They should not have been prosecuted,” he said as he signed pardons.

The pardons were handed down the day before pro-life advocates arrived in Washington for the 52nd annual March for Life.

Convictions

Among the 23 whose convictions were wiped away were 10 protesters found guilty after an October 2020 demonstration at an abortion clinic in Washington.

The leader of the protest, Lauran Handy, was convicted of a federal civil rights offense after she and other demonstrators entered Washington Sergi-Clinic on Oct. 22, 2020, blocked the doors, with some chaining themselves together on chairs, to block access to treatment areas.

Handy, who was the director of activism for Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, was eventually sentenced to four years and nine months in prison for her part in organizing the protest.

The group describes its mission as one of mobilizing “grassroots anti-abortion activists for direct action and [to] educate on the exploitative influence of the Abortion Industrial Complex through an anti-capitalist lens.”

After she was sentenced to jail time on a separate charge in July 2022, Handy said, “As a Catholic and progressive myself, I am compelled by my deeply held beliefs (religious and political) to put my body between the oppressed and the oppressor.”

A fellow activist, Herb Geraghty of Pennsylvania, who was charged for the October 2020 event, spoke out about his beliefs on the motivation for the charges in an October 2022 post to social media.

“It is clear that the Biden administration intends to use the DOJ as a weapon against political dissidents,” Geraghty said.

Trump pardoned Handy as well as co-defendants Jonathan Darnel of Virginia; Jay Smith, John Hinshaw, and William Goodman of New York; Joan Bell of New Jersey; Paulette Harlow and Jean Marshall of Massachusetts; Heather Idoni of Michigan; and Geraghty, among others.

The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for a list of all 23 defendants.

The FACE Act

The law used to prosecute the pro-life demonstrators, the FACE Act, became law in 1994, and made it illegal to prohibit or obstruct access to a person attempting to access reproductive health services. This includes physically or by use of force or intimidation.

Signed into law by President Bill Clinton, it was enacted during a time when blockades and clinic protests were on the rise, and pro-life advocates were targeting abortion providers and facilities.

The same act prohibits interference with anyone “lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship” and bans the intentional damage or destruction of any reproductive health, or religious facility.

However, according to Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) data from the Department of Justice indicates that the application of the law has been used almost exclusively to prosecute pro-life demonstrators. He said that based on the data his office obtained from the DOJ, 97 percent of FACE Act prosecutions from 1994 to 2024 were against pro-life protesters.

“The FACE Act was one of the primary weapons of abuse — being used to politically target, arrest, and jail pro-life Americans for speaking out and standing up for life,” Roy said in a Jan. 23 statement in response to the pardons.

Roy also introduced the FACE Act Repeal Act of 2025 to the 119th Congress in hopes of ending the law as Republicans have a trifecta in the House, Senate, and White House.

Other Pro-Life Measures

The same day the president signed the pardons, the House of Representatives passed a bill, 217–204, along party lines to enact standards of care for babies born alive after a failed abortion. Senate Democrats blocked the measure on Jan. 22.

The Born-Live Abortion Survivors Protection Act requires the same level of care for a baby that survives an abortion that would be offered to any other infant of the same gestational age.

On Jan. 24, thousands took part in the annual March For Life, marking the 52nd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which federalized the right to access abortion.

The march is less than three years after that decision was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which returned the policy-making on the issue of abortion to individual states.

People take part in March for Life in Washington on Jan. 24, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Trump on Friday signed a memorandum reinstating the Mexico City policy, a directive that blocks U.S. funds to foreign organizations that perform or promote abortions overseas.

The president also signed an executive order reaffirming the Hyde Amendment, a longstanding federal ban on taxpayer funding for elective abortions. The order rescinded two Biden-era policies aimed at expanding access to abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.