Trump pardons 23 peaceful pro-life activists jailed under Biden
Simon Caldwell• January 24, 2025
US President Donald Trump has pardoned 23 peaceful pro-life activists jailed under the previous presidency of Joe Biden.
Mr Trump signed an executive order on the eve of the national March for Life and announced: “They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted. This is a great honour to sign this.”
He said the activists were prosecuted when they were simply exercising their rights under the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects freedoms of speech, the Press, religion and association.
Among them was Fr Fidelis Moscinski, a priest.
Steve Crampton, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, the law firm representing 21 of the activists, said afterwards: “Today, freedom rings in our great nation.
“The heroic peaceful pro-lifers unjustly imprisoned by Biden’s Justice Department will now be freed and able to return home to their families, eat a family meal, and enjoy the freedom that should have never been taken from them in the first place.”
Peter Breen, the executive vice president of the firm, said that pro-life advocates have “suffered FBI raids, federal prosecutions, and severe punishment for peacefully and courageously witnessing for life”.
He added: “We thank President Trump for keeping his promise to these pro-life mothers, fathers, grandparents, pastors, and priests.
“What happened to these peaceful pro-life individuals must never happen again. We urge Congress to act swiftly in repealing the FACE Act to make sure that the Justice Department can never again weaponise this law to target peaceful pro-lifers with severe charges.”
According to the Daily Wire, several of those convicted were given lengthy prison sentences for activities which included singing, praying and for blocking the entrances to late-term abortion facility in Washington DC.
They include Lauren Handy, who was serving a sentence of four years and nine months; John Hinshaw who was sentenced to 21 months; William Goodman, Joan Bell and Herb Geraghty who were each jailed for 27 months; Jonathan Darnell, who is serving 34 months; and Jean Marshall, Paulette Harlow and Heather Idoni, who were each sentenced to two years in jail.
For a protest outside an abortion clinic in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, where pro-life Christians sang hymns, prayed, and urged women not to have abortions, Calvin Zastrow, 63, was jailed for six months and 75-year-old Chester Gallagher was sentenced to 16 months in prison.
In New York, Bevelyn Beatty Williams was sent to jail for three-and-a-half years after she obstructed the entrance to an abortion facility in Manhattan.
Eva Edl, an 89-year-old survivor of a Second World War concentration camp, was awaiting sentence for her part in two protests at the time Mr Trump issued his pardon.
According to reports, she could have faced up 10 years in prison under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.
The legislation was brought in to protect churches and clinics but 97 per cent of prosecutions have been of pro-life activists, many of whom were guilty of minor trespassing offences.
Under the Biden-Harris administration not one person was prosecuted under the FACE Act in connection with the 436 attacks against churches that took place in 2024 alone.
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)