Many of the nearly two dozen people President Donald Trump pardoned in January, who had broken into and blocked access to abortion clinics, are vowing to launch a new wave of civil disobedience.
At a recent online event by the anti-abortion group LiveAction, several of the activists released from federal prison said they will resume efforts in the coming months to shut down remaining clinics in America, and they urged fellow abortion opponents to join them.
Reinvigorated Protests and Legal Shifts
“Get out there, whether it’s outside the clinic or inside, or wherever you need to be to actually prevent unborn children’s lives from being taken,” said Herb Geraghty, a Pittsburgh-based anti-abortion activist who entered a Washington abortion clinic in 2020 to disrupt its operations and implore patients to not terminate their pregnancies.
On the heels of the pardons, Trump’s FBI and DOJ dropped several ongoing investigations into threats against abortion clinics and issued a new memo signaling reduced enforcement going forward against such acts. Those developments — along with a new push in Congress to repeal the law Geraghty and others violated — indicate that clinics will reemerge as a front in the battle over abortion access, and a focus of a president who called himself “the most pro-life” in history.
Geraghty, who served 17 months of a 27-month sentence before receiving a pardon he attempted to reject, told POLITICO that despite being “traumatized” by prison, his incarceration was worth it and he remains “committed to nonviolent direct action in service of the pro-life cause.”
“There’s actual lives being saved every minute you are committing the crime,” he said of the activists’ unauthorized entry into abortion clinics. “Every minute that a rescuer is inside the building, they are not killing babies.”
Challenges and Consequences
Several others pardoned by Trump said they plan to go into abortion clinics either by force or stealth to “rescue” fetuses. And as they welcome new Justice Department guidance directing officials not to penalize such actions except under “extraordinary circumstances” with “significant aggravating factors, such as death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage,” they are demanding that state and local law enforcement give them similar leeway.
“Get out of our way and let citizens defend children in a way that maybe you aren’t willing to do,” Jonathan Darnel, who was sentenced to 34 months in prison for “use of force and physical obstruction” at a Washington abortion clinic in 2020, said during the event. “If you’re a Christian police officer, a pro-life police officer, you need to commit in your heart not to arrest rescuers that are defending children, leave them be, even if it costs you your job. If you’re not willing to protect the children yourself, let us do it.”
Legal Ramifications and Future Actions
Beyond pardoning Darnel, Geraghty and others serving time for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, the Trump administration also moved to dismiss with prejudice — meaning a future administration can’t revive the cases — charges brought against anti-abortion protesters who blocked access to clinics in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Tennessee.
The FBI has also recently informed some clinics that it is dropping ongoing federal investigations into threats made against them.
Community Response and Concerns
Calla Halle, the executive director of A Preferred Women’s Health Center, which operates several clinics in Georgia and North Carolina, said she recently received a call that the agency would be handing off to state authorities its work on a bomb threat one of her clinics received in July. The FBI declined to comment on the case. State authorities have yet to contact her.
Halle fears the pardons and new DOJ policy will be “a catalyst for more protesting and more aggressive actions.”
“Protesters seem to know that they’re not going to be held accountable,” she said, citing “a lot more boundary-pushing” over the last few weeks. Some anti-abortion activists have gotten multiple citations for trespassing at Halle’s Charlotte, North Carolina, clinic since Trump issued the pardons, and one protester posed as a patient to enter the clinic and attempted to access its administrative office.
Changing Tactics and Responses
Abortions have recently shifted away from the brick-and-mortar clinics the anti-abortion movement has long targeted, and most pregnancy terminations now happen at patients’ homes using medication.
Even so, the National Abortion Federation, which supports abortion rights, has tracked a steep increase in violence against clinics, staff and patients since the 2022 Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
NAF Chief Program Officer Melissa Fowler said while it’s too soon to have data on incidents since Trump’s pardons and enforcement changes, they have received a spike in requests from clinics for on-site security assessments and trainings.
Outlook and Predictions
Some of the pardoned individuals are still facing state charges for entering abortion clinics without permission. If convicted, they stand to receive a lighter sentence than the federal charges carried — 30 days compared with several years in prison.
Clinics in New York City and Washington where some of the pardoned individuals were arrested over the last few years told POLITICO they, like Halle, have seen an uptick in incidents this year.
Paul Vaughn, who was convicted of blocking access to a Tennessee abortion clinic in 2021 and was pardoned by Trump, was more optimistic, telling his fellow abortion opponents at the LiveAction event that the felony charges the Biden administration brought against the group “backfired” and “emboldened us.”
“They wanted to spread fear into the church and people that would dare stand up for the unborn,” he said. “And yet, God had other plans.”
Future Strategies and Mobilization
Jason Storms, the leader of the anti-abortion group Operation Save America, told POLITICO he’s convening a conference in South Carolina next month to train the next generation of clinic protesters and debate what tactics the movement should embrace.
There is unity on the right, he said, that abortion “needs to be opposed, even to the point of risking arrest or severe persecution,” and that many believe sit-ins inside and outside of clinics and other “acts of interposition” are among the best ways to do that.
Several of the pardoned protesters are former members of Operation Save America’s leadership or “dear friends” of the group, Storms confirmed, and they’ve told him since being released from prison that there’s a lot of “enthusiasm” about what they can accomplish with Trump in office.
“Some see our tactics as aggressive,” he said in an interview. “We don’t believe they are, of course, not anywhere near as aggressive as what is going on inside of the abortion clinic, where little bodies are being torn to pieces.”
