Pro-abortion Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) pressed President-elect’s Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi during a confirmation hearing Wednesday about whether or not she would enforce the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act as head of the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The FACE Act has been a flashpoint in the abortion debate during the Biden administration, with the DOJ using the law to almost explicitly go after pro-life advocates who peacefully protest at abortion clinics. Some Republicans have proposed doing away with the law altogether in response to the Biden administration’s apparent weaponization of the law, calling it unconstitutional. Democrats reject that assessment, countering that the federal law is needed to dissuade protesters from engaging in violent behavior.
“Since the 1990s, the FACE Act has protected patients, providers, and facilities that provide reproductive health services. Will you commit to continuing to enforce the FACE Act to address violence and threats against those providing reproductive healthcare services?” Klobuchar asked.
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“Senator, the FACE Act not only protects abortion clinics, but it also protects pregnancy centers and people going for counseling,” Bondi replied. “The law should be applied even-handedly. Yes, Senator.”
“So, you’ll uphold the enforcement of that law?” Klobuchar added.
“I’ll uphold the enforcement of the law, Senator,” Bondi again answered.
The 1994 law, signed by then-President Bill Clinton, prohibits “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services.” The act was written to equally protect abortion clinics, pro-life pregnancy resource centers, and churches, however, 97 percent of FACE Act cases since the law’s inception have been against pro-life advocates.
Data obtained by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) shows that in less than four years, Biden’s DOJ has accounted for more than a quarter of all 211 FACE prosecutions. At least 55 FACE Act cases have been prosecuted during the Biden administration, only five of which were against pro-abortion attacks on pregnancy centers, despite the increase in attacks against pro-life pregnancy centers and churches following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
Biden’s DOJ has bolstered potential sentencing time by ten years in some cases by using the KKK-era “conspiracy against rights” charge paired with the FACE Act. For a few cases, the FBI has allegedly conducted early morning raids against pro-life advocates, even allegedly holding them at gunpoint in front of their families.
READ MORE: Federal Judge Pauses FACE Act Case Against Pro-Lifers Until Trump’s White House Return
“I think everything points to the fact that these [prosecutions] are politically motivated. They were brought basically as punishment after the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” Thomas More Society senior counsel Steve Crampton told Breitbart News in a December 2024 interview. “And the fact that the Biden administration formed the so-called reproductive rights task force also after Dobbs only strengthens the case. They made this interdepartmental … effort to engage in, effectively, a witch hunt against pro-lifers.”
President-elect Trump pledged — in 2023 and again in 2024 — to create a task force to review and potentially pardon or commute the sentences of every “political prisoner who’s been unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration,” including pro-life activists.
Thomas More Society submitted official petitions for pardon to the incoming Trump administration on Tuesday on behalf of 21 pro-life advocates.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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