President Trump on Friday touted his recent pardoning of anti-abortion activists in a prerecorded video played before thousands of attendees at the March for Life in Washington.
The day before the annual event, Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists including Lauren Handy, who was sentenced last year to almost five years in prison for her role in a 2020 blockade of a reproductive health clinic.
Handy garnered widespread attention after police officers said they found five human fetuses in her Washington home shortly after she was charged with federal civil rights offenses that year.
In his message, Trump talked up his role in the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Trump called Roe v. Wade a disastrous ruling that kicked off 50 years of “division and anger.”
He also committed to stopping the “radical Democrat push” for “unlimited abortion” and promised to investigate “radical left attacks” on churches and crisis pregnancy centers during his second term.
“We will bring perpetrators to justice,” he said.
Trump’s stance on abortion shifted over the course of the 2024 presidential campaign as he sought centrist voters and faced pressure from social conservatives to move to the right on the issue.
When asked if he would support a national abortion ban, Trump said abortion decisions should be left up to individual states.
Vice President Vance, who attended the march in person, told the crowd that under a second Trump presidency, the U.S. faces the return of the most “pro-family, most pro-life American president in our lifetime.”
Vance said he wants the government to make it easier for Americans to afford to have children.
“We need a culture that celebrates life at all stages,” Vance said. “One that recognizes and truly believes that the benchmark of national success is not our GDP number or our stock market, but whether people feel that they can raise thriving and healthy families in our country.”
