The Story Behind the Pro-Life Pardons, by Monica Miller

The above words were spoken by Donald Trump during a June 22, 2024, Faith and Freedom Coalition event, creating great expectations that indeed pro-life prisoners would at some point be free. Trump did get a few facts wrong; for one, Paulette Harlow, who participated in the October 22, 2020, rescue at the Washington, D.C., Surgi-Center, did sing hymns—but not outside the abortion center—but well within the waiting room, while she and fellow rescuer Joan Andrews Bell, in defense of the unborn about to be aborted, blocked a door they believed led to the abortion procedure rooms.

If Trump got one thing straight it was the fact that the Justice Department under Biden was indeed weaponized to “viciously persecute pro-life activists.” While Trump did not pardon the twenty-three pro-lifers on the “first day, immediately”— when he was inaugurated January 20th—he did make good on his pledge the day before the March for Life, January 24th—in time for some of them to be freed from prison and attend the March on January 25th, as did Joan Andrews Bell. The majority of the convicted pro-lifers, in defense of the unborn about to be killed, physically blocked abortion center doors or hallways—thus resulting in being charged with the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a bill signed by Bill Clinton in May 1994—which carries, at most, a one-year maximum prison term.