By Canadian Press

Justice Department curtails prosecutions for blocking reproductive health care facilities

Jan 24, 2025 | 12:30 PM

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

Justice Department chief of staff Chad Mizelle said in a memo that 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.”

Mizelle also ordered the immediate dismissal of three civil FACE Act cases related to 2021 blockades of clinics in Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Ohio. One man was accused of obtaining “illegal access to a secure patient space at a Planned Parenthood facility in Philadelphia without staff permission or knowledge” and barricading himself in a restroom, according to court papers.

“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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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.

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

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.

Mizelle wrote that “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.

Alanna Durkin Richer And Christine Fernando, The Associated Press