Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Biden DOJ Enlisted Abortion Groups To Help Track Pro-Life Activists

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Abortion advocacy groups routinely helped the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) track pro-life activists, providing information that became the basis for indictments, according to a new report.

The DOJ’s National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers “affirmatively asked the abortion groups about pro-life individuals’ travel and constitutionally protected advocacy,” according to a Tuesday report on the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.

Former Civil Rights Division trial attorney Sanjay Patel, who served as director of the task force, “was on texting terms with the National Abortion Federation’s (NAF) Security Team and regularly communicated with Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF),” the report reveals.

“During the investigations of the later pardoned cases, the NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] sent DOJ ‘security reports’ or ‘dossiers’ on the activities of the pro-life activists and their personal information,” the report states. “For example, in 2021, before an annual conference by a pro-life group, one pro-choice NGO sent the Task Force Director and the FBI a 137-page memorandum on the conference schedule, lodging, and multi-page dossiers on numerous ‘anti-choice individuals,’ including many of the pardoned defendants.”

In one instance, Patel also agreed to serve as a reference on NAF’s application for a private grant. Though a supervisor told him to obtain ethics approval, the “DOJ’s review of all custodian emails did not reveal any email where Patel contacted his ethics officer on this matter or retracted his offer to NAF,” according to the report.

Meanwhile, the Biden DOJ had “limited” interactions with pro-life organizations as pregnancy centers faced attacks following the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case in 2022. They ultimately pursued only three prosecutions against abortion activists.

President Donald Trump pardoned 23 pro-life activists in January 2025 who were prosecuted during the Biden administration.

The Biden DOJ requested an average sentence nearly twice as long for pro-life defendants as for pro-choice defendants, at 26.8 months and 12.3 months, respectively.