Trump Effectively Greenlights Anti-Abortion Violence

It was never a secret what Donald Trump and his cabinet of deranged, pro-forced birth advisers would do once elected: continue to restrict abortion rights and inevitably put pregnant people and health providers in even greater danger.

At the end of last week, likely hoping his actions would go unnoticed, Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists who were convicted for not only illegally barricading abortion clinics, but in some cases, violently attacking patients and clinic staff, as well as stealing aborted embryos and fetal tissue. In a statement shared with Jezebel, Center for Reproductive Rights President Nancy Northrup called the pardons a "get-out-of-jail-free card inviting anti-abortion extremists to step up their attacks on reproductive health clinics with impunity." 

Among the pardoned are anti-abortion leader Lauren Handy, and her co-defendants, who, in May, were sentenced to about five years in prison for invading a Washington, D.C., clinic in 2020. Handy also famously stole five aborted fetuses from an abortion clinic in 2022 and illegally kept them in her home; this was part of a broader scheme to have photos of the fetuses submitted into evidence during her trial in order to create a highly inflammatory spectacle that would further malign abortion clinics, and likely mobilize even more violent protesters. While invading the D.C. clinic in 2020, one of Handy’s co-defendants assaulted a nurse who then sprained her ankle; another knocked a woman experiencing labor pains to the floor and then blocked her from entering the clinic.

Despite these actions, Trump declared on Thursday that Handy and her co-defendants “should not have been prosecuted” and praised them for being “peaceful pro-life protesters.” He pardoned all of them: Jonathan Darnel of Virginia; Jay Smith, John Hinshaw, and William Goodman, all of New York; Joan Bell of New Jersey; Paulette Harlow and Jean Marshall, both of Massachusetts; Heather Idoni of Michigan; and Herb Geraghty of Pennsylvania. Trump also pardoned 13 others who were convicted on federal charges of using physical force to block access to clinics. Additionally, many of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who also received pardons last week were known in their communities for harassing abortion clinics.

At the same time that Trump issued these pardons, his Department of Justice announced it would now limit enforcement of the FACE Act (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances), a law that was enacted in the 1990s to prohibit anti-abortion protesters from blocking entry to abortion clinics. The law was signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1994 in response to years of extreme violence and obstruction from protesters, including the murder of Dr. David Gunn in 1993.

According to the new directive from the attorney general's office, prosecutors are only to enforce the FACE Act in "extraordinary circumstances,” such as in incidents involving death, extreme bodily harm, or significant property damage, CBS News reports. So, short of health providers being killed or almost killed, or their clinics razed to the ground, the federal government now seems to advise that prosecutors look the other way; frankly, even if providers are killed or their clinics subjected to arson down the line, who’s to say the Trump administration won’t come up with some reason to insist no action be taken?  As Slate put it, Trump has effectively declared "open season" on abortion providers.

Biden's DOJ played a decently active role in enforcing the FACE Act, but now, Trump's DOJ states that FACE Act violations will primarily be left to state and local law enforcement: "Until further notice, no new abortion-related FACE Act actions—criminal or civil—will be permitted without authorization from the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division," the attorney general's office wrote to prosecutors.

In June, Trump referenced some of the convicted anti-abortion activists and promised to free them: “Many people are in jail over this… We’re going to get that taken care of immediately.” So, this isn’t surprising, but it's telling that these pardons were such a high priority for this administration. Trump and his team clearly aim to glorify anti-abortion extremists and signal to others that they can take whatever action they see fit against clinics and be protected by the president. Anti-abortion extremist groups have since heaped praise on the president, thanking Trump for “immediately delivering on his promise" and declaring that "freedom rings in our great nation."

The National Abortion Federation (NAF), which tracks violence against abortion providers across the country, said the pardons are "disturbing and concerning for the safety of abortion providers and their patients." The organization believes Trump's reelection itself is "very likely" to "embolden anti-abortion extremists to further harass, threaten, and target providers who are just trying to provide patients with care."

In 2023, NAF reported that, in the year Roe was overturned, they saw a 538% increase in people obstructing clinic entrances (from 45 in 2021 to 287 in 2022); a 913% increase in stalking of clinic staff (from 8 in 2021 to 81 in 22); and a 144% increase in bomb threats. "Even with this law in place, anti-abortion activists have threatened to kill providers, have bombed their clinics, and have harassed their patients," Northrup said. "With these pardons, President Trump has left patients and providers to fend for themselves against those who will go to extremes to stop women from accessing healthcare."

Trump's war on clinics is just one part of the equation. Within hours of taking office, his administration appeared to scrub reproductiverights.gov as well as any vaguely helpful “abortion” search results from the Health and Human Services Department’s website. One of Trump’s first executive orders was re-signing the global gag rule on Friday, to block all aid for global organizations that even discuss abortion, which will shutter family planning services for millions across the world. Trump also signed an executive order to reverse previous Biden directives that called on hospitals in abortion-banned states to follow federal law and provide emergency, stabilizing abortions even if this was at odds with state abortion bans. This order comes on the heels of the first five confirmed reports of deaths caused by anti-abortion laws at the end of last year; it will inevitably contribute to the long-festering maternal mortality crises in abortion-banned states.

Also on Friday, top anti-abortion leaders who hold massive influence in Trump’s orbit wrote to the DOJ and explicitly asked the administration to enforce the Comstock Act of 1873 to ban the mailing of abortion pills. This could mark the first step toward a major, terrifying move that legal experts have spent the past year warning about: a federal ban on medication abortion.

It’s almost as if a step-by-step plan—maybe even a 900-page plan, perhaps a project for the year 2025!—was already pre-written to empower the Trump presidency to dismantle our rights with ruthless efficiency starting day one. Who would have thought!