Justice Department curtails prosecutions for blocking access to reproductive health centers

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This article was published 24/01/2025 (633 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s new Justice Department leadership issued an order Friday to curtail prosecutions against people accused of blocking access to abortion clinics and reproductive health centers, calling the cases an example of the “weaponization” of law enforcement.

Prosecutions and civil actions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act or “FACE Act” will now be permitted only in “extraordinary circumstances” or in cases presenting ”significant aggravating factors,” attorney general chief of staff Chad Mizelle said in a memo sent to the head of the department’s Civil Rights Division.

Mizelle also ordered the immediate dismissal of three FACE Act cases related to 2021 blockades of clinics in Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

The memo signals a sharp departure from Justice Department under the Biden administration, which brought cases involving dozens of defendants accused of violating the law. The act prohibits physically obstructing or using the threat of force to intimidate or interfere with a person seeking reproductive health services, and prohibits damaging property at abortion clinics and other centers.

The legal group Thomas More Society, which represents many of the defendants, called the move a “huge moment in the fight against FACE.”

“In each of these three FACE Act cases, Thomas More Society attorneys were representing several brave and peaceful pro-life defendants — who can now breathe easy without the heavy burden of federal prosecutors on their backs,” the group said Friday.

The announcement comes hours after Trump vowed to support tens of thousands of anti-abortion protesters at Friday’s March for Life, declaring, “We will again stand proudly for families and for life” in a prerecorded address. A day earlier, Trump pardoned several anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading abortion clinic entrances in violation of the FACE Act, which is designed to protect abortion clinics from obstruction and threats.

“President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of ending the weaponization of the federal government and has recently directed all federal departments and agencies to identify and correct the past weaponization of law enforcement,” Mizelle wrote in the memo obtained by The Associated Press.

“To many Americans, prosecutions and civil actions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (‘FACE Act’) have been the prototypical example of this weaponization. And with good reason,” he wrote.

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Mizelle, who was brought on to serve as chief of staff to Trump’s pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, said “more than 100 crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life organizations, and churches were attacked in the immediate aftermath” of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. Yet, nearly all of the prosecutions under the FACE Act have been against anti-abortion protesters, he wrote.

“That is not the even-handed administration of justice,” he wrote.

Vice President JD Vance, who spoke to the crowd at the March for Life in person, celebrated pardons for FACE Act defendants and called Trump “the most pro-life American president of our lifetimes.”

Abortion-rights advocates slammed Trump’s pardons of those convicted of violating the law, which was passed in 1994 during a time where clinic protests and blockades were on the rise, as was violence against abortion providers, such as the murder of Dr. David Gunn.

“Not even a week into his presidency, Donald Trump has disregarded the law and greenlit violence against abortion providers, all at the expense of people who wish to live in peace and safely exercise the right to control their own bodies and health,” Krista Noah, national director of affiliate security and response planning at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said Thursday.