Joe Biden is weaponizing the Justice Department to viciously persecute pro-life activists and Americans of faith. Just last month, the Biden DOJ got Paulette Harlow, a 75-year-old woman in poor health, sentenced to two years in prison for singing outside of a clinic…she was singing, actually a beautiful voice, she was singing beautifully outside of a clinic. And fearing she would die in prison, her husband pleaded with the judge for mercy and even asked to be thrown in prison with his wife and the judge responded by mocking their religion, he was mocking their religion. I wonder who that judge is.
Paulette is one of many peaceful pro-lifers who Joe Biden has rounded up, sometimes with SWAT teams, and thrown them in jail. Many people are in jail over this. This is just crazy. We’re going to get that taken care of immediately, first day, immediately.
But let’s call these brave Americans what they really are, it’s persecuted Christians. That’s what they are.
The above words were spoken by Donald Trump during a June 22, 2024, Faith and Freedom Coalition event, creating great expectations that indeed pro-life prisoners would at some point be free. Trump did get a few facts wrong; for one, Paulette Harlow, who participated in the October 22, 2020, rescue at the Washington, D.C., Surgi-Center, did sing hymns—but not outside the abortion center—but well within the waiting room, while she and fellow rescuer Joan Andrews Bell, in defense of the unborn about to be aborted, blocked a door they believed led to the abortion procedure rooms.
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If Trump got one thing straight it was the fact that the Justice Department under Biden was indeed weaponized to “viciously persecute pro-life activists.” While Trump did not pardon the twenty-three pro-lifers on the “first day, immediately”— when he was inaugurated January 20th—he did make good on his pledge the day before the March for Life, January 24th—in time for some of them to be freed from prison and attend the March on January 25th, as did Joan Andrews Bell. The majority of the convicted pro-lifers, in defense of the unborn about to be killed, physically blocked abortion center doors or hallways—thus resulting in being charged with the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a bill signed by Bill Clinton in May 1994—which carries, at most, a one-year maximum prison term.
But Biden’s rabidly pro-abortion U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, through the Civil Rights Division, brought an additional charge: namely, Conspiracy to Interfere with Civil Rights—a charge unprecedented in the history of pro-life activism. Not even in the heyday of the pro-life rescue movement, when tens-of-thousands of pro-lifers were arrested, did rescuers face such a charge. It carries a ten-year maximum prison term and a $350,000 fine.
I attended the trials and the sentencings of the D.C. rescuers who came to be called the “Garland 9.” I spent days in the federal courtroom of Colleen Kollar-Kotelly and wrote about my first-hand experience for this magazine. The Washington, D.C., Surgi-Center abortionist Cesare Santangelo kills unborn children through the ninth month of pregnancy and even admits, in an undercover Live Action video, that should a “live-birth” occur during an abortion, he will do “nothing” to save such babies. Despite these facts, as was the case in all of the rescue trials, the pro-life defendants were denied a “defense of others.”
I have also been put on trial, been convicted, and even served a few jail terms for pro-life rescues, so I know very well the insanity of the legal system when it comes to the abortion issue. It’s simple: the unborn simply do not exist. A judge once denied our motion for a “defense of necessity” by arguing that since abortions were a constitutionally protected right “no injury is caused when abortions are performed of which this court need take notice and it is unreasonable for defendants to believe that their actions were necessary to prevent such harm.” On March 30, 2023, I was sentenced again for a Red Rose Rescue in which I participated. Standing before Michigan Judge Cynthia Arvant, I addressed the court and said “Your honor, in the objective world of right and wrong, I am not guilty.” The judge responded: “I don’t operate in the objective world.”
Pro-lifers arrested for their participation in rescues of the unborn must endure the contrived and artificial fantasy world of the pro-life trial—or as one of my favorite attorneys calls it, “the abortion distortion.” And this distortion was on full display in the August and September 2023 trials of nine pro-lifers who participated in the Washington, D.C., rescue.
The other pardoned pro-lifers had participated in various rescues that took place in New York, Tennessee, Florida, and Michigan. The twenty-three who were pardoned represent a diverse group, from devout Catholics like Joan Andrews Bell; to committed Evangelical Protestants such as Cal Zastrow; to eighty-nine-year-old Eva Edl, who as a teenager survived a Communist concentration camp in Romania; to twenty-six-year-old Herb Geraghty who identifies herself as “non-binary” and atheist. The pardoned twenty-three also include one Hispanic, Jay Smith, and one African American, Bevelyn Williams. Most ironically, Caroline Davis also received a Trump pardon of her convictions in the Tennessee and Michigan rescues. Why ironic? In order to avoid jail time, Davis turned state’s evidence against her fellow pro-lifers. In the D.C. case, escorted by federal marshals, she took the stand, testified against them, and helped seal their fate.
The unprecedented prosecution, conviction, and draconian jail terms handed to these pro-lifers was equally matched by the unprecedented presidential pardons. And Trump pardoned them with a flourish. With the inauguration come and gone and the pro-lifers not pardoned on “day one,” some pro-lifers with whom I spoke thought he just might not make good on his pledge after all—or, due to the incredible controversy the pardons were sure to generate, that Trump would sign the pardons quietly, late on a Friday night as politicians are apt to do when they seek to diffuse and deaden opposition. But this was hardly the case. With cameras rolling, Trump, seated at his desk in the Oval Office, was addressed by his aide, who said: “You have a set of pardons for peaceful pro-life protestors who were prosecuted by the Biden administration for exercising their first amendment rights.”
Trump asked, “Do you know how many?”
“I believe it is twenty-three, sir.”
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Trump explained, “Twenty-three people who were prosecuted. They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted.”
As he penned his signature to the pardon document Trump stated, “This is a great honor to sign this.”
He then proudly lifted up the document and displayed it to reporters, adding: “They’ll be very happy.”
But before the signing ceremony was over, he turned to his aide and asked: “So they’re all in prison now?”
The aide responded: “Some are out of prison on custody,” to which Trump ended the signing with one word: “Ridiculous.”
And on that very day, federal prisons began releasing pro-life prisoners, some of whom breathed the air of freedom in the wee morning hours of January 25th.
