From OSV News:
On the eve of the national March for Life rally in Washington, President Donald Trump announced Jan. 23 he was issuing pardons for 23 protesters arrested for violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinics (FACE) Act.
Trump signed the pardons in the Oval Office.
“They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people,” he told reporters. “This is a great honor to sign this.”
The Thomas More Society, the Chicago-based public interest law firm, had earlier in January announced it had submitted formal requests to pardon 21 pro-life activists convicted under the FACE Act. They included Joan Bell, Coleman Boyd, Joel Curry, Jonathan Darnel, Eva Edl, Chester Gallagher, William Goodman, Dennis Green, Lauren Handy, Paulette Harlow, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, Jean Marshall, Father Fidelis Moscinski, Justin Phillips, Paul Place, Paul Vaughn, Bevelyn Beatty Williams, Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, and James Zastrow.
The two other convicted pro-life activists pardoned by Trump are Herb Geraghty of Pennsylvania and Jay Smith of New York.
Many are still incarcerated. Lauren Handy, a Catholic convicted for her participation in a 2020 abortion clinic blockade in Washington, has been serving the longest sentence: 57 months.
According to a list maintained by Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, Handy is currently in a federal prison in Florida. Idoni is incarcerated in Florida; Marshall and Goodman in Connecticut; Darnel and Calvin Zastrow in Illinois; Hinshaw in Massachusetts; Geraghty in Pennsylvania; Calvin Zastrow in Illinois; and Williams, who was arrested for protesting outside an abortion clinic in New York City, in Alabama.
“Today, freedom rings in our great nation,” said Steve Crampton, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society. “The heroic peaceful pro-lifers unjustly imprisoned by Biden’s Justice Department will now be freed and able to return home to their families, eat a family meal, and enjoy the freedom that should have never been taken from them in the first place.”
CNA had reaction from one of those pardoned, Paul Vaughn:
“On one side, it’s great to see a president like Donald Trump who understands the injustice that has gone on,” Vaughn told CNA. “On the other side of the coin, it doesn’t erase the injustice that my family and the other 22 pro-lifers have endured for the last two years at Biden’s DOJ.”
“We won’t get that back,” he added.
Calling the pardon “a mixed bag,” Vaughn said he is both “rejoicing” with his family and co-defendants and hoping that “we do better as a nation going forward.”
“Lord willing,” he said of the jailed pro-life activists who were among those that received a pardon, “[they] will be eating dinner with their families tonight and not in the federal pen, with, you know, bologna sandwiches and whatever.”
Vaughn’s wife, Bethany, told CNA that while she is happy about the pardon, she hopes her husband will pursue his appeals case and ultimately win so that future prosecutions may be prevented from happening.
