On the eve of Friday's March for Life, President Donald Trump added 23 abortion sit-in convicts to his pardon list, complementing the legislative efforts of congressional Republicans and legal defense for pro-life pregnancy centers.

A New Jersey pregnancy center network allegedly harassed by Democratic Attorney General Matthew Platkin, a Planned Parenthood ally who consulted the abortion giant on the wording for his "consumer alert" against pro-life centers, asked the Supreme Court Tuesday to let it sue him in federal court before Platkin's state-level proceedings against it conclude.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals worsened a split among the federal appeals courts last month by ruling that First Choice Women's Resource Centers' constitutional claims were not "ripe" because it can assert those claims in state court and its "current affidavits do not yet show enough of an injury," joining the 5th Circuit's precedent and rejecting the 9th Circuit's.

"This case may be the unicorn that allows this Court to review an important issue that would otherwise escape review" because it involves "the rare situation where the question presented has survived parallel state proceedings," its lawyers at the Alliance Defending Freedom wrote.

The so-called preclusion trap prevents "the target of a state investigatory demand," such as Platkin's subpoena for "years of sensitive internal information" from First Choice including donor identities behind "nearly 5,000 contributions," from seeking federal recourse for "deprivations of rights" at the hands of state officials, the petition says.

By rejecting the 9th Circuit's 2022 ruling in Twitter v. Paxton, which said a plaintiff could be harmed by the "objectively reasonable chilling of its speech … even prior" to enforcement of a civil investigative demand, the 3rd Circuit has "nearly guarantee[d] that First Choice will lose its choice of federal forum," it says.

The preclusion trap — already nullified by SCOTUS in 5th Amendment takings cases — was a major concern for 3rd Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas in oral argument last month. 

The Trump nominee dissented from the four-page unsigned ruling, holding the case "indistinguishable" from a SCOTUS precedent against California's compelled disclosure of donor identities, according to a footnote.

Senate Republicans reintroduced a bill to require lifesaving treatment for infants who survive abortions, briefly a topic in the 2024 campaign because five such infants died on Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz's watch as Minnesota governor.

Under the bill, healthcare practitioners who discriminate against abortion survivors would face up to five years in prison and mothers could also sue them, while staff would have to report violations to law enforcement. It imposes no penalties on mothers for seeking abortion.

But unlike the GOP's 2021 attempt at passage via budget amendment, every Senate Democrat voted against cloture Wednesday, blocking a vote on the bill itself. The GOP-led House version passed in 2023 and again Thursday, both times with a single Democratic vote.

Democrats made "something that should be commonsense, completely partisan for the first time," Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Lankford said. Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Democrats betrayed their longstanding "commitment to eliminating the filibuster." 

Before the vote, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the bill "attacks women’s health care using false narratives and outright fear-mongering" and, echoing a dubious fact-check during an ABC News debate, claimed that denying such care "is already illegal." 

Public support would seem to be on the GOP's side, with a Marist poll released Thursday finding that 60% of American adults support abortion bans after three months, with support breaking down as 80% GOP, 64% independent and 40% Democrat. 

Another 12% of Americans support a ban after six months — the point at which support becomes a Democratic majority (56%) — according to the poll of nearly 1,400 Americans earlier this month, sponsored by the Knights of Columbus.

That's despite the fact that far fewer in each group call themselves pro-life: 63% GOP, 34% independent and 14% Democrat. Whopping majorities of each group, from 79% Democrat to 88% GOP, say they support abortion-free "pregnancy resource centers," for which KofC members have raised nearly $14 million, the Catholic organization said.

Pro-life activists' patience was growing thin after Trump issued pardons for people convicted of violence at the Capitol, running a so-called darknet market where others sold illegal drugs and two D.C. cops involved in a motorist's death, but not their peers imprisoned for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, some elderly and in poor health.

Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy, perhaps the pro-life prisoners' biggest advocate in Congress, reintroduced his bill to repeal the FACE Act with two dozen cosponsors Tuesday, citing DOJ data that 97% of prosecutions were against pro-lifers.

"Now that we have a Republican trifecta in the House, Senate, and White House, Congress should move quickly to repeal this law and ensure that no future president can weaponize it against pro-lifers ever again," he said. "No more excuses, let's get it done."

The 23 pardons for FACE Act sit-ins came less than a day before the March for Life and nine days after the Thomas More Society appealed to Trump on behalf of "grandparents, pastors, a Holocaust survivor, and a Catholic priest," thanking him for "your consistent, vigorous opposition to the weaponization of the Justice Department by the Biden Administration."

The letter brims with contempt for both Joe Biden and his Justice Department, which "almost entirely ignored the firebombing and vandalism of hundreds of pro-life churches and pregnancy centers" — violations of the FACE Act — but "viciously pursued pro-life Americans" under the same law, the subject of House Judiciary Committee hearings in 2023 and last December.

It notes that Trump promised the Faith and Freedom Coalition to free the activists, specifically naming 75-year-old Paulette Harlow, on the "first day" of his next administration.

National Review upped the pressure Tuesday, noting the husband of inmate Bevelyn Williams said she told him that Jan. 6 prisoners in her Alabama prison had been released.

"She is still there waiting and she is honestly confused," Rickey Williams wrote on X, getting 2,900 reposts. "I am confused as well as to why she hasn’t been pardoned along with the other 20 Pro-Lifers?"

An activist who fears retaliation from the White House told Politico she was baffled that Trump waited until Thursday to pardon her peers, since like the Jan. 6 pardons they are "fully in line with Trump’s agenda to oppose the weaponization of the government."