President Trump announced Thursday he's pardoning anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading entrances at clinics that provide abortions. "They should not have been prosecuted," he said as he signed pardons for "peaceful pro-life protesters." Those pardoned were convicted in the October 2020 invasion and blockade of a Washington, DC, clinic, the AP reports. Lauren Handy was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for leading the blockade by directing allies to link themselves together with locks and chains to block the clinic's doors. A nurse sprained her ankle when one person pushed her while entering the clinic, and a woman was accosted by another blockader while having labor pains, prosecutors said. Police found five fetuses in Handy's home after she was indicted.
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 second term, anti-abortion advocates have ramped up calls for Trump to pardon protesters charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which is designed to protect clinics from obstruction and threats. The 1994 law was passed during a time where clinic protests and blockades were on the rise, as was violence against abortion providers, such as the murder of Dr. David Gunn in 1993.
Abortion rights advocates slammed Trump's pardons as evidence of his opposition to abortion access despite his contradictory statements on the issue as he attempted to find a middle ground between anti-abortion allies and the majority of Americans who support abortion rights. "Donald Trump on the campaign trail tried to have it both ways—bragging about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade while saying he wasn't going to take action on abortion," said Ryan Stitzlein of the national abortion rights organization Reproductive Freedom for All, per the AP. "We never believed that that was true, and this shows us that we were right." The pardons were announced the day before the annual anti-abortion protest March for Life in Washington.
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Anti-abortion groups, which had lobbied for the pardons, are expressing frustration with Trump, saying their cause doesn't seem to be a priority for him, per Politico. Other Republican presidents, for instance, signed executive orders imposing anti-abortion restrictions on domestic and international family planning programs within a day or two of taking office. One activist complained that Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people in the attack on the US Capitol on Monday but waited until Thursday to act on the clinic protesters. "These pardons are fully in line with Trump's agenda to oppose the weaponization of the government," she said. "So why he couldn't have pardoned them along with the 1,500 on Day 1 is beyond me." (More President Trump stories.)
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