Within the first month of his second term, Donald Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion advocates who were convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. This vital piece of federal legislation, introduced in response to the murder of abortion provider Dr. David Gunn and the attempted murder of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, was adopted with the express purpose to shield abortion providers and patients from harassment, intimidation, and violence. Now, the Department of Justice (DOJ) under Trump has issued a report that falsely claims the Department of Justice under Joe Biden weaponized the FACE Act, when in fact, the Biden administration applied the law in a manner consistent with the way it has been applied since it took effect in 1994.

In its report, Trump’s Department of Justice accuses Civil Rights Division attorney Sanjay Patel and other members of the previous administration’s DOJ of using their authority to target anti-abortion advocates while ignoring other alleged FACE Act violations, specifically at places of worship or anti-abortion pregnancy centers. The DOJ also claims Patel sought additional charges against FACE Act violators to increase their sentence length.

While Trump’s DOJ claims the Biden-era cases were brought out of anti-Christian, anti-conservative bias, the reality is that these cases were brought because the anti-abortion trespassers at the heart of them posed a clear threat to both patients and staff. Publicly available evidence shows that these individuals knowingly impeded access to care, intimidated patients and staff, and in some cases caused staff members to be injured — clear violations of the FACE Act.

Impeding access to care

• According to court documents in US v. Lauren Handy et al, the convicted FACE act violators were found to have stormed the entrance to the clinic before blockading it with chains, furniture, and their bodies. This led one patient to climb through a window to access the clinic; another, who had driven from Ohio for her appointment and who had been told by one of the clinic invaders that the clinic was not seeing patients that day, “collapsed to the ground in agony.”
• According to court documents in US v. Calvin Zastrow et al, the sentenced FACE act violators were again found to have blocked the entrance to a clinic, going so far as to follow a clinic employee to keep her from entering via an emergency exit.
• MS Now reports one case where a patient seeking care following a miscarriage was prevented from entering the clinic by an anti-abortion blockade that left her “bleeding and crying in the back of her car.”

Intimidating patients and staff

• In US v. Lauren Handy et al, one witness testified that Handy’s accomplices “grabbed and yelled at” her when she attempted to enter the clinic for her appointment.
• In court documents in the case of US v. Bevelyn Beatty Williams, Williams is reported to have threatened clinic staff, telling them she was going to “terrorize this place” and saying she would stop the clinic from providing care “by any means necessary.” (Of note, Williams has ties to the Proud Boys, a far-right neo-fascist organization who allegedly served as her “bodyguards” when she harassed clinics in New York. Learn more about the ties between the anti-abortion and white supremacist movements here.)

Actions leading to injury

• In US v. Bevlyn Beatty Williams, Williams “purposefully leaned against the door [to the clinic], crushing Victim-1’s hand.” Despite her victim— a volunteer at the clinic —crying out, Williams continued to lean against the door, ultimately injuring her victim’s hand. One article reports that, when her victim cried out in pain, Williams said, “We shall not be moved.”
• When Lauren Handy and her associates invaded a D.C. abortion clinic, they “forcefully shoved their way inside, injuring a nurse and terrifying patients and staff,” according to Feminist Majority Foundation and the DOJ.

Pardoning these anti-abortion clinic invaders and framing their trials as “weaponization,” rather than the straightforward enforcement of a law expressly intended to protect access to abortion services, only serves to embolden clinic invaders, blockaders and their allies, effectively creating an open season on abortion providers. This is, again, exactly what the FACE Act was meant to prevent. A key example of this comes from the case of US v. Lauren Handy et al. Throughout their FACE Act trial, the defendants in Handy and their allies promoted false and unfounded claims that the Washington Surgi-Clinic — the same clinic they invaded — had committed “infanticide.” Following their pardon, this intimidation campaign against the clinic continued, with anti-abortion advocates regularly engaging in clinic harassment, petitioning the Department of Health, and even harassing a man described as a family member of the abortion provider on staff in an attempt to gain information about him.

While the report from the Department of Justice refers to the anti-abortion clinic invaders as “peaceful,” the actions that led to their conviction under the FACE Act are clearly anything but. There is nothing “peaceful” (or, as one of the clinic invaders put it, “sexy”) about terrorizing abortion providers and patients.

In fact, it is this Trump administration that is weaponizing the FACE Act. It is this administration that deployed the FACE Act this January against independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, who were not protesting an abortion clinic, but instead, reporting on individuals protesting ICE’s violent invasion of Minnesota during a community religious service in Minneapolis. Abortion was nowhere to be found: Lemon and Fort’s actions had nothing to do with what the FACE Act was intended for. Instead, the FACE Act was weaponized by this White House to attack the freedom of the press, particularly press covering widespread discontent with the administration’s militarized takeover of the Twin Cities, resulting in the federal agent murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and widespread destruction and fear.

The FACE Act is a tool to address the serious problem of anti-abortion violence. It should not be repealed by Congress. Further, the FACE Act should not be weaponized to further the aims of authoritarianism.