Trump pardons anti-abortion protesters convicted of blocking clinics, harassing patients
The protesters had been charged under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which was signed into law in 1994.
Just three days after taking office, President Donald Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists who had been convicted on charges of blocking abortion clinic entrances in Washington D.C., Tennessee, Michigan, and New York City over the past five years.
The activists had been charged under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. “They should not have been prosecuted,” Trump said during the pardon signing. “This is a great honor to sign this.”
“President Trump’s pardons are a get-out-of-jail-free card inviting anti-abortion extremists to step up their attacks on reproductive health clinics with impunity,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “Congress enacted the FACE Act over 30 years ago with strong bi-partisan support because patients, clinic staff, and doctors needed protection from a reign of terror that included murders, arson, vandalism and clinic blockades.”
History of the FACE ACT
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act was signed into law in 1994 by President Bill Clinton.
The statute “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services, or other federal criminal statutes where arson, firearms, and threats were also used,” according to the website of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.
The law is not simply about protecting clinics that provide abortions but “all patients, providers, and facilities that provide reproductive health services, including pro-life pregnancy counseling services and any other pregnancy support facility providing reproductive health care.”
The penalties for violating the act include a $10,000 fine and jail time of not more than one year or both for a first offense, while a second offense carries a $25,000 fine and jail time of not more than three years or both.
The law was passed in response to violent attacks against patients and abortion providers. These included the murders of Dr. David Gunn, who was fatally shot in Pensacola, Florida, in 1993 by anti-abortion activist Michael Griffin, and of Dr. George Tiller, who was shot in the head at his church in Wichita, Kansas, in 2009 by anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder.
Tiller’s clinic and Tiller himself had been the target of actions organized by Operation Rescue, a fundamentalist Christian organization founded in 1986 by Randall Terry.
One of Operation Rescue’s most well-known actions was called the “Summer of Mercy” by anti-abortion protesters. Thousands of protesters were arrested over six weeks in 1991 in Wichita protesting what they called the “baby-killing industry.” At the center of the protests was Tiller, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Kansas who provided abortions later in pregnancy.
Anti-abortion activists had been trying to shut down Tiller’s clinic for decades, using blockades, legal action, death threats, and other means. The clinic was firebombed. Tiller was shot in both arms five times in 1993 by activist Shelley Shannon.
“He chose his life,” Dan Monnat, Tiller’s lawyer, told the New York Times. “And having chosen it, he wasn’t going to complain about the restrictions on his liberty by those who saw it another way.”
In May 2009, Tiller, a former Navy flight surgeon who spent several years under the protection of federal marshals and whose motto was “Trust women,” was gunned down by Roeder.
Susan Frietsche, legal director and executive director at the Women’s Law Project, told Philadelphia radio station WHYY that the FACE Act “prevents violence, intimidation and obstruction. So, your right to free speech ends where someone else’s right to obtain and provide reproductive health care begins.”
Efforts to repeal the FACE Act
Republican lawmakers who oppose abortion continue efforts to repeal the FACE Act. Texas Rep. Chip Roy introduced the FACE Act Repeal Act of 2025 on Jan. 21. Roy introduced a similar repeal bill in 2021.
“Americans just spent the last four years being targeted by a weaponized justice system. The FACE Act was one of the primary weapons of abuse — being used to politically target, arrest, and jail pro-life Americans for speaking out and standing up for life.” Roy said in a statement.
Over the years, the FACE Act has been upheld in numerous federal circuit courts, and in February 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear challenges to the law.
Trump administration and the FACE Act
A memo distributed by Department of Justice chief of staff Chad Mizelle in January says, “To many Americans, prosecutions and civil actions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (“FACE Act”) have been the prototypical example” of weaponization of the federal government.
“To address this concern and to ensure that federal law enforcement and prosecutorial resources are devoted to the most serious violations of federal law, future abortion-related FACE Act prosecutions and civil actions will be permitted only in extraordinary circumstances, or in cases presenting significant aggravating factors, such as death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage,” the memo says.
It then goes on to demand the dismissal of three pending cases brought under the act.
