ADF commends Trump for pardoning pro-life advocates wrongly imprisoned
The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Erin Hawley, vice president of the ADF Center for Life and Regulatory Practice, regarding President Donald Trump’s pardoning Thursday of peaceful pro-life advocates who were wrongly imprisoned after the Biden administration weaponized the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act against them:
“The Biden administration politicized and abused the FACE Act to target and discriminate against peaceful pro-life advocates. While they received harsh prison sentences, vandals who violently attacked pro-life pregnancy centers got off scot-free. Now, President Trump has rightly restored equal protection of the law by pardoning the peaceful pro-life advocates, including Eva Edl, an 89-year-old Soviet concentration camp survivor who sat in her wheelchair at the entrance to an abortion facility. Eva faced a sentence of up to 11 years in federal prison along with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines just for singing and praying from her wheelchair.
“The president’s pardon is a crucial first step in returning the Department of Justice to the rule of law. Under the prior administration, the FACE Act was wrongly weaponized to target pro-life activity while leaving pregnancy centers and churches unprotected. This was lawfare, not the even-handed application of law the American people deserve.”
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice brought federal criminal charges against at least 26 pro-life individuals under the FACE Act but issued no charges against those who obstructed or vandalized pregnancy care centers that year. Despite the nearly 400 cases of vandalism and arson against pregnancy care centers and churches since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Biden’s DOJ charged only a handful of individuals.
Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.
# # #
Related Resources
ABOUT Erin Morrow Hawley
Erin Morrow Hawley serves as senior counsel and vice president of the Center for Life and regulatory practice at Alliance Defending Freedom. Before joining ADF, Hawley practiced appellate law at Kirkland and Ellis LLP, Bancroft LLP, and King & Spalding LLP. Hawley has litigated extensively before the U.S. Supreme Court as well as numerous federal courts of appeals and state courts of last resort. She also worked at the U.S. Department of Justice, serving as counsel to Attorney General Michael Mukasey. As an academic, Hawley served as an associate professor of law at the University of Missouri and she also taught constitutional law as a senior fellow at the Kinder Institute for Constitutional Democracy. Hawley is a former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Hawley received her bachelor’s degree in Animal Science from Texas A&M University and her law degree from Yale Law School where she served as a Coker Fellow in Constitutional Law and on the Yale Law Journal. She is an active member of the Missouri and District of Columbia bars and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and various federal courts of appeals.