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<p>Advocacy law firm says Biden administration did the activists wrong.</p>
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<p>The Thomas More Society is asking President-elect Donald Trump to pardon 21 pro-lifers convicted of violating a federal law that prohibits blocking access to abortion facilities soon after he takes office next week.</p>
<p>The advocacy law firm said the pro-lifers committed what its leaders called “mere peaceable civil disobedience” and didn’t deserve the prison terms they received after being prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice under President Joe Biden.</p>
<p>“These peaceful pro-life Americans mistreated by Biden include grandparents, pastors, a Holocaust survivor, and a Catholic priest — all are selfless, sincere patriots,” the society said in a <a href="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/63d954d4e4ad424df7819d46/6787e6eb978c3844c48bed30_TMS%20Pardon%20Petition%20Cover%20Letter.pdf">letter</a> to Trump dated Jan. 14. “… We respectfully urge that all 21 of them detailed here are richly deserving of full and unconditional pardons.”</p>
<p>Trump said several times during the 2024 presidential campaign that he would look into the cases of the pro-lifers, though he has not publicly promised to pardon them.</p>
<p>The letter to Trump, made public Wednesday, was signed by eight members of the leadership team of the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit law firm that takes on cases involving life, family, and religious freedom.</p>
<p>Its leaders argue in the letter that the federal law under which the pro-lifers were prosecuted, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994, is unconstitutional because it regulates what the letter calls “protest activity,” which it says “is non-economic, non-commercial activity” that does not fall under Congress’ authority to regulate commerce under the U.S. Constitution.</p>
<p>Thomas More Society lawyers also contend that the Biden administration applied the federal statute unfairly — targeting pro-lifers who blockaded abortion facilities while showing comparatively little interest in what the lawyers describe as the “more than 170 incidents of violence against pro-life pregnancy centers and churches nationwide in the wake of the leak of the <i>Dobbs </i>decision” in 2022 that overturned <i>Roe v. Wade </i>— “even though pregnancy centers and churches are supposed to be protected” by the same law.</p>
<p>Among the pro-lifers seeking pardons from Trump are 10 people who entered an abortion facility in Washington in October 2020 and shut it down, <a href="https://newbostonpost.com/2024/06/05/pro-life-75-year-old-kingston-woman-sentenced-to-two-years-in-prison-for-blockading-late-term-abortion-facility/">according to federal prosecutors</a>, “using chains and locks to barricade the facility and passively resisting their anticipated arrests to prolong the blockade.” The pro-lifers said they were trying to stop late-term abortions at the facility. A <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&;v=420631786000084">video</a> of the blockade was posted to social media.</p>
<p>In another case, six people in January 2024 were convicted of blockading an abortion facility in March 2021 in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/six-defendants-convicted-federal-civil-rights-conspiracy-and-freedom-access-clinic-entrances#:~:text=According%20to%20evidence%20presented%20at,secured%20by%20the%20FACE%20Act.">according to the U.S. Department of Justice</a>.</p>
<p>“These defendants knowingly chose to violate laws they disagreed with,” <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/six-defendants-convicted-federal-civil-rights-conspiracy-and-freedom-access-clinic-entrances#:~:text=According%20to%20evidence%20presented%20at,secured%20by%20the%20FACE%20Act.">said</a> U.S. Attorney Henry Leventis, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, at the time. “The jury’s verdict today is a victory for the rule of law in this country and a reminder that we cannot pick and choose which laws we follow.”</p>
<p>The 21 pro-life advocates seeking pardons were convicted in federal court in November 2023.</p>
<p>They are: 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, Franciscan Father Fidelis Moscinski, Justin Phillips, Paul Place, Paul Vaughn, Bevelyn Beatty Williams, Calvin Zastrow, Eva Zastrow, and James Zastrow. Read more about them <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/meet-the-pro-life-prisoners-whom-trump-is-expected-to-pardon">here</a>.</p>
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<br /><a href="https://www.ncregister.com/news/thomas-more-society-asks-trump-to-pardon-21-pro-lifers">Source link </a></p>
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Thomas More Society Asks Trump to Pardon 21 Pro-Lifers Who Blockaded Abortion Facilities| National Catholic Register
