CHICAGO (AP) President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would pardon anti-abortion activists convicted of blocking 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 pardoners were involved in the invasion and blockade of a clinic in Washington in October 2020.
Lauren Handy was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for leading the blockade, leading blockaders to band together with locks and chains to block the clinic’s doors. A nurse sprained her ankle when a person pushed her as she entered the clinic, and a woman was accosted by another obstructionist while she was in labor pain, prosecutors said. Police found five fetuses in Handy’s home after she was charged.
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 increased calls for Trump to pardon protesters charged with violating Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, which is intended to protect abortion clinics from obstruction and threats. The 1994 law was passed at 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 speech in June in which he criticized former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department for pursuing charges against protesters.
“A lot of people are in prison over this,” he said in June, adding, “We will take care of them immediately.”
Abortion rights advocates hit Trump’s pardons as evidence of his opposition to abortion access, despite his vague, contradictory statements on the issue as he tried to navigate the campaign trail between anti-abortion allies and the majority of Americans who support abortion rights to find a middle ground.
“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 take action on abortion” The national abortion rights organization Reproductive Freedom for All. “We never believed that to be true, and this shows us that we were right.”
SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser thanked Trump for the “immediate promise” to pardon the protesters and argued their prosecutions were political.
The legal group Thomas More Society argued that the face law defendants they represent were “wrongfully imprisoned” in a January letter to Trump. The group had assured the defendants that Trump would review their cases and pardon them when he took office.
“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 toward restoring justice .”
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, among Trump’s most faithful supporters, called the prosecution of anti-abortion protesters “a grotesque attack on the principles of this country” and urged Trump to pardon them as they read the stories of such anti-abortion protesters on the Senate floor Thursday . He singled out Eva Edl, who was involved in a 2021 blockade of the Tennessee clinic and whose story has drawn attention from the largest national anti-abortion groups.
Hawley said he had “a great conversation” with Trump about the protesters on Thursday morning.
News of the pardons comes ahead of Friday’s annual pro-life anti-abortion protest in Washington, where the president will address the crowd in a video.
