Trump Pardons 23 Pro-Life Protesters

OAN Staff Blake Wolf
2:10 PM – Friday, January 24, 2025

On Thursday, President Donald Trump pardoned 23 pro-life protesters, many of which are elderly and in poor health.

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“We released 23 people that were unjustly put in and having to do with pro-life. And, they will be released, and they’ll be out very shortly. It was disgraceful what happened,” Trump stated.

The protestors were imprisoned for the October 2020 blockade of a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic –where the group linked their arms together in order to block the clinic’s doors.

“They should not have been prosecuted,” Trump said, adding that it was a “great honor to sign this.”

The protesters were released ahead of Friday’s annual pro-life march in D.C., where Vice President JD Vance is expected to speak.

The individuals were prosecuted under the “FACE Act,” which was passed in 1994 designed to protect abortion clinics from obstructions.

Trump previously vowed to release the pro-life activists during the campaign trial, as multiple individuals involved were serving multi-year sentences. The longest sentence was given to a woman named Lauren Handy, who was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison for her involvement in the Washington, D.C., protest.

Republican lawmakers have attempted to repeal the law, arguing that Democrats have weaponized the law against pro-life groups.

“No administration in history has targeted Christian like the Biden Admin. We saw one persecution after another, from shutting down churches during COVID to raiding pro-lifers homes at the crack of dawn. EVERY pro-life prisoner Biden wrongly imprisoned should be pardoned,” wrote Republican Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

Trump also recently pardoned all of the January 6^th U.S. Capitol protesters, stating: “These people have already served years in prison, and they’ve served them viciously. It’s a disgusting prison. It’s been horrible. It’s inhumane. It’s been a terrible, terrible thing.”

Additionally, Trump pardoned Silk Road Marketplace founder Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht was previously serving a double life sentence, plus 40 years, after being convicted in 2015 for creating the Silk Road, a black market website where individuals were able to sell firearms and narcotics while utilizing encrypted virtual currencies in order to avoid being detected.

Trump noted that the pardon was in honor of “the Libertarian movement,” while adding that “the scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me.”

Ulbricht responded to Trump’s pardon following his release, thanking the new GOP president “for giving me this amazing blessing.”

“This is such an important moment for me and for my whole family,” Ulbricht stated in a social media post. “This is an important moment for everybody, everywhere who loves freedom and who cares about second chances.”