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In the midst of newly inaugurated President Donald Trump pardoned nearly 1,500 demonstrators of January 6anti-abortion groups are calling on the president to pardon a 76-year-old grandmother and 20 others who were jailed and prosecuted for pro-life protests under Biden’s Justice Department.
A group, the Thomas More Societya law firm specializing in pro-life cases, presented a petition to the new president in which he laid out the legal basis for issuing pardons and pointed out how President Joe Biden abused the justice system to attack these pro-life activists.
Steve Crampton, a senior lawyer for the Thomas More Society, told Fox News Digital that it is “absolutely vital” that these activists are pardoned in order to restore equality under the law.
“Hopefully, with President Trump’s actions here, he will restore some sanity and the rule of law to the approach of the Justice Department and the FBI, but also help move that culture toward a culture of living in place of death,” Crampton said. “This small act on your part will indeed serve to ignite a momentous movement toward the restoration of respect for life in this nation that is desperately needed.”
WHITE HOUSE ASSIGNS PRESIDENT TRUMP’S ‘MASSIVE’ ANNOUNCEMENT FOR FIRST FULL DAY IN OFFICE
President Trump signs pardons for the Jan. 6 defendants in the Oval Office of the White House on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025. (Reuters/Carlos Barria)
Trump indicated several times during his campaign that he is open to pardoning some of these pro-lifers who were prosecuted under a federal law called Law of Freedom of Entrances to Clinics (FACE).. Activists were convicted of violations of the FACE Act for participating in several “sit-ins” protests at abortion clinics in Washington, DC, Nashville, Detroit, Long Island, and Manhattan.
According to the Thomas More Society, Biden’s Department of Justice used the FACE Act to increase convictions for crimes that would otherwise have been simple trespassing charges. The group says Biden tried to make an example of these pro-lifers by prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law, despite the fact that their protests at abortion clinics were entirely peaceful and without threats of violence or intimidation.
Now that Trump is back in the White House, the Thomas More Society believes it can restore justice for these 21 activists and, in doing so, help restore trust and confidence in the justice system among the American people .
“In my lifetime, I’ve never seen a president keep his campaign promises the way this president has,” Crampton said. “So we’re very excited that he’ll do it again in this case. And for these people who are just salt of the earth, the best kind of people who should be in their communities doing good rather than behind bars.”
TRUMP PARDONS GABREI EVERY JANUARY 6 THE DEFENDANT BUT SAYS IT’S JUST BEGINNING
Lauren Handy, director of activism for the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, in Washington, DC on April 2, 2022. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Of the 21 activists prosecuted under the The Biden administration use of the FACE Act, nine are currently in prison. Several of the prisoners are elderly, with three, Jean Marshall, Paullette Harlow and Joan Andrews Bell, in their 70s. The oldest is Bell, who, at 76, has seven grown children and seven grandchildren. She was sentenced to more than two years in prison.
One activist, Heather Idoni, 59, who was sentenced to two years in prison, has suffered serious health problems and suffered a mild stroke while in prison.
The longest prison sentence was for a 31-year-old Lauren Handywho is currently serving a nearly five-year sentence for his role in organizing a 2020 protest at the Surgi-Clinic in Washington, DC, led by Dr. Cesare Santangelo.
Also facing prison is Eva Edl, 89, a survivor of a communist concentration camp who has been active in the pro-life movement for decades.
WORLD LEADERS REACT TO PRESIDENT TRUMP’S RETURN TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Anti-abortion protesters outside the Supreme Court building, the day the justices heard arguments in the Mississippi abortion rights case, in Washington on December 1, 2021. (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
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“Down is up and up is down in this case,” Crampton said. “These people are people who, some of them, have adopted several children with special needs from places like Ukraine. Some of them are missionaries in China and Ukraine and the worst places on the planet, doing everything they can to do good for people who are in desperate need. These are people who should be receiving the citizenship medals that President Biden is handing out to people like the George Soroswho is trying to destroy our nation.”
“We must restore the rule of law,” he continued. “The questioning of Mr. Trump’s cabinet appointees last week, ironically from the left, points again and again to the need not to single out political opponents for prosecution and so on.”
“We have recently embarked on a disrespect for the rule of law that has undermined any respect for authority in general, let alone the law in particular,” he said. “So I really think that this is also a small step back in restoring that absolutely essential respect for the rule of law that we have to have if America is going to survive.”
