“Even if the Trump administration … cages the vicious beast that is the FACE Act, there’s no guarantee that another Democrat or even another Republican that gets into office in four years may not unleash the beast again,” Crampton said. “So we want to see the thing put away.” That could happen through efforts outside the courts. Republicans in the House and Senate have introduced bills that would repeal the law. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., this week condemned the Biden administration’s prosecution of these pro-lifers. 

Calvin Zastrow, 64, was in his cement-walled prison cell in the Thomson, Ill., federal correctional institution Thursday night when a guard banged on his door and told him he was being released. His sentence wasn’t supposed to end until March 29. But in less than two hours, Zastrow was walking out of the prison singing a hymn, finally wearing jeans again. He lost weight during his three months in prison for blocking the entrance to a Nashville-area abortion facility. The size of jeans he asked for no longer fit, so he had to hold up the pants with one hand.

Meanwhile, Zastrow’s daughter Eva, 26, was at their home in Michigan, where she was on probation for her own involvement in the same 2021 abortion center sit-in. Since Inauguration Day, she had heard rumors that President Donald Trump would pardon her father and her along with 21 other pro-life activists. But she didn’t believe it until Thursday afternoon when she opened a group text from fellow pro-lifers. “Boom, there’s a video of Trump signing it with a squeaky marker,” she said.

The document Trump signed pardoned the father and daughter along with 21 other pro-life activists who received similar convictions under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and civil rights conspiracy laws for blocking abortion facility entrances. Some, like Eva, were under house arrest or on probation. Some were awaiting the start of their prison sentences. Others had already begun their sentences as early as August 2023.

Former President Bill Clinton signed the FACE Act in 1994 to deter demonstrators from using physical means to interfere with abortion center operations. First-time offenders could face up to a year in prison. For decades, prosecutors rarely used the law to put pro-lifers behind bars. But under the Biden administration, the Department of Justice paired FACE indictments with charges of “conspiracy against rights”—the right to access so-called “reproductive health services”—which brought a possible 10-year prison sentence.

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