The pardons were handed down the day before a swarm of pro-life advocates swarmed Washington for the 52nd annual March for Life.
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.
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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.
