Protests, Pardons, and Politics
Not every protest conviction is the same, and the differences matter
Last month, President Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion protesters convicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. A few weeks later, he highlighted these pardons in his February 6, 2025 executive order, “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.” The order framed the pardons as corrections of past injustices, positioning the protesters as victims of governmental overreach targeting Christians:
The Biden Department of Justice sought to squelch faith in the public square by bringing Federal criminal charges and obtaining in numerous cases multi-year prison sentences against nearly two dozen peaceful pro-life Christians for praying and demonstrating outside abortion facilities. Those convicted included a Catholic priest and 75-year-old grandmother, as well as an 87-year-old woman and a father of 11 children who were arrested 18 months after praying and singing hymns outside an abortion facility in Tennessee as a part of a politically motivated prosecution campaign by the Biden Administration. I rectified this injustice on January 23, 2025, by issuing pardons in these cases.
The story is more complicated, and the details matter.
The FACE Act: A Brief Background
Congress enacted the FACE Act in 1994 with bipartisan support (69–30 in the Senate and 237–169 in the House of Representatives) in response to rising violence against abortion providers and abortion clinics. The Act prohibits the use of force, threat of force, or physical obstruction to intentionally injure, intimidate, or interfere with individuals seeking abortions or seeking to engage in the free exercise of religion. Specifically, 18 U.S. Code § 248(a) imposes criminal sanctions on anyone who:
(1) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with . . . any person because that person is or has been . . .obtaining or providing reproductive health services;
(2) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with . . . any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship; or
(3) intentionally damages or destroys the property of a facility, or attempts to do so, because such facility provides reproductive health services, or intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship.
In practice, the FACE Act has protected not only abortion clinics but also reproductive health centers more broadly and—given the scope of the ultimately enacted legislation—places of worship.
Trump’s Pardons
Based on media accounts and legal documents, each of the 23 pardoned individuals participated in one or more protests at abortion facilities. Moreover, the indictments arising out of these protests indicate that 17 of the 23 pardoned individuals physically blocked access to or forcefully entered the facilities (in some cases causing bodily harm to others).
In other words, it appears that most of the anti-abortion protesters pardoned by President Trump were engaged in conduct that would be clearly impermissible under longstanding First Amendment doctrine.
This is not always the case with abortion-related protests. In past years, a number of jurisdictions have pursued laws and regulations unconstitutionally restricting abortion protesters. And in 1990, the Supreme Court upheld one of those restrictions in Hill v. Colorado. There is, in other words, good reason to be wary of regulations in this context—as I have argued in amicus briefs to the Supreme Court urging it to overrule Hill.
Abortion remains a hotly-contested issue in our country, and protesters have every right to make their views known—including in proximity to abortion facilities. It is possible that some of those pardoned by Trump were victims of overzealous prosecution. But in most of these 23 cases, the indictments—and often the protesters’ own words—indicate clear violations of the FACE Act.
Protesters could certainly challenge the constitutionality of the FACE Act itself—there have been multiple such challenges to date. But until a court in the relevant jurisdiction strikes down the Act, it remains legally enforceable as a properly enacted federal law.
Alternatively, protesters could engage in civil disobedience—a conscientious decision to break a law publicly, nonviolently, and with the willingness to accept legal consequences. The power of civil disobedience comes not just from the act of defiance but from the moral clarity demonstrated by accepting punishment.
But very little of the coverage I have read surrounding the pardoned anti-abortion protesters references either the purported unconstitutionality of the FACE Act or the practice of civil disobedience. Instead, the prevailing narrative has focused on religious freedom and, after the President’s recent executive order, anti-Christian bias.
Why It Matters
The problem isn’t just the pardons. It’s the narrative they support—a story where legal accountability is framed as religious persecution, and where a willingness to break the law is celebrated without the corresponding moral weight of accepting its consequences.
A related question is whether these prosecutions specifically targeted Christians. Antiabortion activism and Christian faith are often aligned, but antiabortion activists themselves have long insisted that the two do not completely overlap. For example, the group Feminists for Life espouses no religious affiliation and describes itself as “shaped by the core feminist values of justice, nondiscrimination, and nonviolence.”
Evidence that these prosecutions reflected religious bigotry would be a serious concern. Widespread bias might also justify Trump’s claims in his executive order. But beyond his own assertions, there’s little evidence that the FACE Act prosecutions were driven by anti-Christian animus.
Trump’s pardons could have sparked a meaningful debate about the scope and application of the FACE Act, including whether it is being enforced unevenly or unconstitutionally. Instead, his chosen narrative is simplistically political: Christians are persecuted victims, the Biden administration was their oppressor, and Trump is their hero. By reducing a complex legal and ethical debate to a political rallying cry, Trump’s story obscures important questions about protest rights, selective enforcement, and the limits of civil disobedience.
In the midst of the flashier pardons around the imprisoned Jan 6-ers, I hadn't heard about this set of pardons. Thank you for the clear explanation of the FACE act!
Also, as a side note, this is such a powerhouse sentence: "The power of civil disobedience comes not just from the act of defiance but from the moral clarity demonstrated by accepting punishment."
At least one of the main protestors who was in prison was an atheist, at the helm of an organization I generally like (Rehumanize International).