President Donald Trump signed an executive order pardoning 23 anti-abortion-rights activists Thursday, one day before he is expected to address thousands of anti-abortion-rights demonstrators at their annual march in Washington.

“Twenty-three people were prosecuted, they should not have been prosecuted,” Trump said at the Oval Office signing ceremony Thursday, noting that “many of them” are elderly. “This is a great honor to sign. They will be very happy.”

Some are in jail,...

Thousands of anti-abortion activists are coming to Washington Friday for the annual March for Life, seeking to build momentum after a string of victories and maintain pressure on legislators.After decades of fighting to overturn Roe v. Wade, organizers are seeking to focus on the multiple state-by-state battles taking place over abortion rights.

Here’s what to know about the 52nd March for Life:

President Donald Trump has pardoned 23 pro-life individuals convicted by Joe Biden’s Department of Justice for praying inside or demonstrating at abortion clinics.

Donald Trump announced Thursday he would pardon anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading abortion clinic entrances. Trump called it “a great honor to sign this”.

“They should not have been prosecuted,” he said as he signed pardons for “peaceful pro-life protesters”.

President Donald Trump issued pardons for 23 pro-life activists on Thursday, fulfilling a promise he made during the presidential campaign.

Trump signed the pardons on Thursday in the Oval Office of the White House on the day before the March for Life to be held in Washington, D.C., according to the Thomas More Society.

For almost a quarter century, the Food and Drug Administration has persistently bent the rules to approve the mifepristone-based chemical-abortion pill known as RU-486 on a fast-track basis and then strip away safeguards regarding its distribution, sometimes using pretexts such as the Covid pandemic. It has done so while playing bureaucratic games to evade judicial review and disregarding the 176-year-old federal statutory ban on sending abortion drugs in the mail.

A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday preserved widespread access to a popular medication abortion pill, the court’s first abortion-related decision since overturning Roe v. Wade two years ago.

The same Supreme Court that overruled Roe vs. Wade two years ago on Thursday followed well-established constitutional principles to dismiss a lawsuit that sought to restrict the availability of mifepristone, a drug used to medically induce abortions. The bottom line is that the decision upholds the Food and Drug Administration’s rules for mifepristone. This is crucial for reproductive rights; it is estimated that 63% of all U.S. abortions are now medically induced rather than being performed surgically.

Senate Republicans tanked an effort Thursday led by Democrats to advance legislation guaranteeing national access to in vitro fertilization, rallying around their alternative legislation instead.

In a 48-47 procedural vote, Senate Republicans torpedoed the advancement of that bill, with only Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowska (R-Alaska) siding joining Democrats. It needed 60 to pass.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest and most politically powerful Protestant denomination, voted Wednesday to oppose in vitro fertilization.

The move may signal the beginning of a broad turn on the right against IVF, an issue that many evangelicals, anti-abortion advocates and other social conservatives see as the “pro-life” movement’s next frontier — one they hope will eventually lead to restrictions, or outright bans, on IVF at the state and federal levels.