President Donald Trump on Thursday issued pardons for some of the nation’s most prolific anti-choice protesters one day ahead of an anti-abortion march in Washington, D.C.
Trump signed the pardons for 23 so-called “peaceful pro-life protesters” on Thursday, days after freeing more than 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants.
“23 people were prosecuted, they should not have been prosecuted,” Trump said in the Oval Office, adding that many of those convicted were “elderly.”
Trump pardons anti-abortion rights activists who physically blocked women from accessing reproductive health care
— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 4:13 PM
Lauren Handy, 31, one of the most notable pardon recipients, was serving a nearly five-year prison sentence for a 2020 abortion clinic blockade that injured a nurse at the facility, per The Associated Press. Law enforcement officials also said they found multiple fetuses inside Handy’s home.
She and at least nine others who received pardons were charged in federal court for violating laws safeguarding women accessing reproductive care clinics.
The pardons came a day ahead of the annual March for Life, a protest that Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., are scheduled to headline.
The freed anti-choice demonstrators join the pro-Trump Jan. 6 defendants and militia leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges, as well as prolific drug trafficker and “Silk Road” operator Ross Ulbricht, also pardoned by Trump.
Critics say the pardons together send a strong message on shifting attitudes towards crime from the GOP, now headed by a man convicted on 34 felony counts.
“With Trump springing classes of crooks — insurrectionists, violent anti-abortion protestors, the kingpin of a drug-and-CSAM marketplace — from prison, any future GOP rhetoric about ‘amnesty’ for peaceable immigrants should get mown down by ridicule,” Democratic strategist Greg Greene said in a post to Bluesky.
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