President Trump Must Pardon the 21 Pro-Life Americans Biden Put in Prison

On Friday morning, President Joe Biden set the record for issuing the most pardons or commutations in U.S. history. While Biden has shown clemency toward Chinese spies, a cop-killer, and a child pornographer, his Justice Department infamously cracked down on right-to-life activists and Roman Catholic laity — an injustice pro-life advocates hope President-elect Donald Trump will correct next week.

One of the nation’s foremost religious liberty organizations, the Thomas More Society, has formally petitioned President-elect Trump to pardon 21 Americans convicted by the Biden-Harris administration for peacefully protesting against abortion or, in one case, potential infanticide under the Federal Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

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“These peaceful pro-life Americans mistreated by Biden include grandparents, pastors, a Holocaust survivor, and a Catholic priest — all are selfless, sincere patriots,” says the letter, signed by eight members of the Chicago-based human rights organization. “We respectfully urge that all 21 of them detailed here are richly deserving of full and unconditional pardons.”

Trump, who will begin his second term on Monday, has pledged to grant some form of clemency to pro-life prisoners of conscience. “To reverse these cruel travesties of justice, tonight I’m announcing that the moment I win the election, I will appoint a special task force to rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who’s been unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration … so that I can study the situation very quickly and sign their pardons or commutations on day one,” he announced at the 2023 Pray Vote Stand Summit, organized by Family Research Council Action. He also said, under his watch, “never again will the federal government be used to target religious believers.”

Trump has since repeated that promise elsewhere. Last February, before the National Religious Broadcasters, Trump lamented the plight of “pro-life activists … convicted on outrageous charges” in Nashville, where the speech took place. In a speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition last June, Trump highlighted the case of Paulette Harlow, a 76-year-old with severe medical issues whose judge mocked her faith.

“I will govern by a simple motto: Promises made, promises kept,” vowed Trump shortly after winning the 2024 presidential election.

In their letter, the legal organization outlines the unjust treatment and dubious legal theories that resulted in federal judges doling out multi-year sentences to its often-elderly clients over acting on their conscience.

The Biden-Harris administration has not prosecuted anyone under the FACE Act for the 436 church attacks that took place last year, even though pro-life pregnancy resource centers are 22 times more likely to be attacked than abortion facilities. “While Biden’s prosecutors almost entirely ignored the firebombing and vandalism of hundreds of pro-life churches and pregnancy centers, they viciously pursued pro-life Americans, obtaining convictions against them under the federal ‘FACE Act’ (18 U.S.C. § 248) and the Ku Klux Klan Act’s ‘Conspiracy Against Rights’ felony provisions (18 U.S.C. § 241). But these individuals participated in mere peaceable civil disobedience, in the heralded tradition of the American Civil Rights activists. Peaceable actions like these usually merit, at worst, a minor misdemeanor conviction,” it states. These prosecutions represent a significant escalation of lawfare and weaponization of government against Christians. “Neither the Clinton DOJ nor the Obama DOJ dared use this plainly inapplicable law against pro-life advocates.”

Such prosecutions were never supposed to take place, according to the bill’s authors. During debate over the 1994 act, the late Senator Ted Kennedy reassured voters that, “if an individual does violate this law for the first time, it is not a felony.”

The letter states the prosecutions also violate the Supreme Court’s ruling last June in Fischer v. U.S. (2024), which warned against the potential use of the law to “criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists alike to decades in prison.”

The FACE Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton more than three decades ago, makes it a federal crime to block or otherwise harm a reproductive health care facility or church. However, the Thomas More Society argued, clients protesting outside a Washington, D.C., abortion facility objected to the potentially illegal murder of late-term or newborn babies after the remains of five infants were found in its garbage. “The trial judge recognized that, if those advocates acted on behalf of those innocent children left to die, their conduct would not violate the FACE Act. But then, that same trial judge refused to allow the jury to hear the significant evidence establishing the defense: that such illegality was occurring and that the advocates were motivated by their desire to oppose that illegality,” the letter states. (Emphasis in original.)

The 31-year-old FACE Act has become passé, as it attempts to enforce a non-right. The 2022 Dobbs decision ruled that the Roe v. Wade opinion erred in inventing a purported right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution. The pro-life ruling “eroded the principal stated purpose of Congress’ enactment of the FACE Act, namely, to protect the purported constitutional right to abortion access,” which Dobbs ruled “as non-existent.”

“We are hopeful that the second Trump administration will spell a new day for pro-life advocates who have faced FBI raids, federal prosecutions, and severe punishment for peacefully and courageously witnessing for life,” said Peter Breen, the Thomas More Society’s executive vice president and head of litigation, who is one of the letter’s signatories. “By acting on the requested presidential pardons, President Trump has a golden opportunity to not only stop the lawfare against peaceful pro-lifers, but to also undo some of the unprecedented damage of the Biden administration. Inside and outside the courtroom, Thomas More Society attorneys have seen up close the harm inflicted by the Biden DOJ’s weaponization of the FACE Act. Today, we call on President Trump to pardon these peaceful pro-lifers and put an end to this government overreach.”

In a related move, Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi promised to investigate the left-wing group behind an infamous federal memorandum the FBI used to infiltrate and investigate traditionalist, Latin Mass Roman Catholic parishes and churchgoers.

The document’s conclusions relied in part upon reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) referred to as an “anti-religious group that has repeatedly gone after conservative and religious organizations”

The SPLC “once infamously … called the Family Research Council a terrorist hate group and an armed gunman came into their lobby and opened fire,” Hawley accurately noted.

“Will you put a stop to the use of the SPLC as an official source for any Department of Justice memorandum or finding?” Hawley asked during Bondi’s confirmation hearings.

“That will be one of the first things we look at,” responded Bondi.

Pro-life stalwarts hope Monday’s inauguration begins the era of a kinder, gentler America that has greater respect for life and liberty.

“We urge President Trump to right the grievous wrongs of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Department of Justice,” stated Steve Crampton, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society.“These 21 peaceful pro-lifers, many of whom are currently imprisoned for bravely standing up for unborn life, are upstanding citizens and pillars of their communities. Through full and unconditional pardons for these pro-life advocates, President Trump has the chance to remedy the harm done to them and their families, deliver on his campaign promises, and repair trust in our constitutional order.”

The 21 pro-life advocates are: Joan Bell, Coleman Boyd, Joel Curry, Jonathan Darnel, Eva Edl, Chester Gallagher, William Goodman, Dennis Green, Lauren Handy, Paulette Harlow, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, Jean Marshall, Fr. Fidelis Moscinski, Justin Phillips, Paul Place, Paul Vaughn, Bevelyn Beatty Williams, Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, and James Zastrow.

LifeNews Note: Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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