‘They Should Not Have Been Prosecuted’: Trump Pardons Pro-Lifers Convicted Under FACE Act
By: Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell, originally published January 23, 2025, The Daily Signal
President Donald Trump pardoned 23 pro-lifers who were convicted for actions including praying outside abortion clinics and encouraging women in unplanned pregnancies to choose life.
“They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted,” the president said.
“This is a great honor to sign this,” he said.
After Trump signed, he added, “They’ll be very happy.”
The pardons came one day before the 52nd annual March for Life in Washington, D.C.
Since 2021, the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice Department has brought criminal or civil cases under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE, Act against at least 50 pro-life advocates. Twenty-one were convicted and 10 are incarcerated. Three were imprisoned and released.
Former President Joe Biden’s critics accused him and his DOJ of weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-lifers while failing to charge pro-abortion criminals for the hundreds of attacks on pregnancy resource centers since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned.
Trump indicated during his campaign he would pardon these pro-lifers quickly upon assuming office.
“Many people are in jail over this,” Trump said in June at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference. “We’re going to get that taken care of immediately [on the] first day.”
Coleman Boyd, who was sentenced to house arrest for a FACE Act violation, told The Daily Signal he “praises the Lord” that Trump kept his word in pardoning the convicted pro-lifers.
“That is a great blessing,” he told The Daily Signal. “I am thankful that my brothers and sisters in prison will be getting out soon and free to continue serving the war outside of those walls. With that said, babies are still being killed every day. Christians need to rise up and rescue those that are being taken to destruction and faithfully love Jesus and love our neighbors and lay down our lives.”
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, both Republicans, are leading the charge in Congress to repeal the FACE Act so it can’t be weaponized against pro-lifers in future Democrat administrations. Ninety-seven percent of FACE Act prosecutions between the years of 1994 and 2024 were initiated against pro-life Americans.
Some of the convicted pro-life activists are represented by the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based conservative public interest law firm. The firm’s general counsel, Andrew Bath, said the law has been “egregiously abused” and “weaponized.”
“On its face, you would look at it and say that it protects abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers and churches equally,” Bath told The Daily Signal in November. “But it hasn’t been used that way. It’s been applied almost exclusively against pro-lifers, and it’s been weaponized, and this weapon has to be removed from the arsenal of those who are willing to abuse government power.”
Many of the now-pardoned pro-lifers have told The Daily Signal they were confident Trump would make good on his promise to pardon them, and that God would use their incarceration for his glory in the meantime.
“He does what he says he’s gonna do too, so that’s one of the reasons I trust him,” 75-year-old Paulette Harlow told The Daily Signal in December. “I like when somebody does what they say they’re gonna do.”
Harlow was sentenced to house arrest for violating the FACE Act due to her chronic health conditions.
“We are thankful that God has stirred the president to pardon those unjustly punished for Jan. 6 and to quickly dismantle the wickedness of DEI and the transgender agenda in our federal government,” Boyd told The Daily Signal on Wednesday. “We trust God to accomplish what is needful on our behalf.”
Elizabeth (Troutman) Mitchell is a reporter for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Daily Signal Podcast.”