Donald Trump flexed his presidential pardoning powers again on Thursday, granting clemency to 23 anti-abortion lawbreakers. The move came one day ahead of the annual March for Life rally in Washington, D.C.
On Friday, a prerecorded video of Trump was broadcast to the anti-abortion marchers. In the video, Trump praised himself for pardoning the criminals, including extremist Paula Harlow.
”At 75 years old, Paula was sentenced to two years in prison, after praying outside of a clinic,” he said. “That’s why she was sentenced to two years.”
However, the facts paint a different picture. Harlow was one of nine protesters indicted in March 2022 for using chains, ropes, furniture, and themselves to block the doors to a health care facility that provides abortions.
Donald Trump holds up an executive order granting clemency to anti-abortion protesters on Jan. 23, 2025.
Per the Justice Department, Harlow and the other eight lawbreakers “forcefully entered the clinic” as a means to keep people from accessing medical care that went against the activists’ beliefs.
Another pardoned woman—whom MAGA die-hard Charlie Kirk described as a “peaceful” activist “persecuted by the Biden regime”—is Bevelyn Williams. In reality, Williams was sentenced to 41 months in prison after she crushed a clinic employee’s hand and used other means to block peoples’ access to the clinic, according to the Justice Department. She also threatened “war” on the clinic’s staff, saying she would “terrorize this place.”
Presidential pardons aside, the thousands of anti-abortion marchers descending upon the nation’s capital on Friday seem to forget one important aspect of the March for Life rally: They’ve already achieved their primary goal.
The first March for Life was held on Jan. 22, 1974, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, in protest of the monumental case granting federal abortion rights to women. But after the conservative-controlled Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, states can now ban abortion to their anger’s content.
However, allowing states to ban abortion isn’t enough for the anti-abortion extremists. According to the March for Life website, they won’t stop until they build a “culture of life” that makes abortion “unthinkable” for everyone.
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