Texas Rep. Chip Roy (R) introduced legislation on Tuesday that would repeal a Clinton-era law that was used by the Biden administration to imprison pro-life activists across the country.
Roy’s bill, first reported by Fox News, would repeal the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law that has been disproportionately used against pro-lifers despite guaranteeing equal protection to churches and pregnancy centers. Under President Joe Biden, pro-life activists across the country were sentenced to prison for their convictions over peaceful protests.
“Americans just spent the last four years being targeted by a weaponized justice system. The FACE Act was one of the primary weapons of abuse — being used to politically target, arrest, and jail pro-life Americans for speaking out and standing up for life,” Roy said. “While President Trump and his team are already fast at work reversing the damage of the J6 political prosecutions and persecutions through pardons and commutations, I am hopeful those targeted under the FACE Act will be given similar relief.”
The Biden administration successfully prosecuted dozens of pro-life activists under FACE, pairing it with a Reconstruction-era felony conspiracy charge that came with the possibility of over a decade in federal prison. As a result, activists were sentenced in Tennessee, New York, and Washington, D.C., to years in prison over their convictions.
In Nashville, Calvin Zastrow was sentenced to six months in prison last year for his participation in a peaceful sit-in outside of a Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, abortion facility where participants sang hymns, prayed, and urged women not to get abortions.
In another case, Lauren Handy was given 57 months in prison for her participation after she helped stage a sit-in at the D.C.-based Washington Surgi-Clinic late-term abortion facility. She is currently serving her sentence in Tallahassee and won’t be free until July 2027.
When passed in 1994, the FACE Act was supposed to protect both churches and clinics, but the law has almost exclusively been used to prosecute pro-lifers. Data obtained by Roy shows that 97% of FACE Act cases brought by the Justice Department have been against pro-life Americans.
“Now that we have a Republican trifecta in the House, Senate, and White House, Congress should move quickly to repeal this law and ensure that no future president can weaponize it against pro-lifers ever again,” Roy said. “No more excuses, let’s get it done.”
At least 20 Republicans in the House are backing the measure and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) is expected to introduce similar legislation in the Senate.
Twenty-one pro-life Americans convicted under Biden have formally requested President Donald Trump to pardon them, saying that the government was weaponized against them. The Thomas More Society, which requested the pardon, is also pursuing a repeal of the FACE Act through the federal courts.
Trump has criticized the Biden Justice Department for targeting pro-lifers on “outrageous charges,” promising on the campaign trail to “rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who’s unjustly victimized by the Biden regime…so we can get them out of the gulags and back to their families where they belong.”
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