Bevelyn Williams was sitting in the TV room at the Federal Correctional Institution in Aliceville, Alabama, when she learned she had been pardoned by President Donald Trump last month.
“Breaking news came on, and he started signing pardons, and I started screaming, ‘I’m going home!’” she said.
Hours later, Williams ran into the arms of her husband, Rickey, and young daughter, Eleanor.
The 33-year-old mother had been several months into a more than three-year prison sentence when she learned about the pardon. Her crime? Being on the wrong side of the abortion debate, she said.
Williams was one of many pro-lifers charged by the Biden administration for participating in protests outside of abortion facilities. Officially, the 23 activists whom Trump pardoned on Jan. 23 were charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. But according to Williams, the Biden administration deliberately escalated its charges against her and others in order to make an example out of them.
“They knew full and well that I was a regular mom with a kid, and that I wasn’t a criminal,” she told IWFeatures. “They gave me the full force of the treatment as a criminal anyway.”
Williams alleged the Biden administration charged her and several other pro-lifers with additional aggravating factors, such as the intent to cause bodily harm or injury, to increase the seriousness of the charges and sentences against them.
As Trump pointed out in his pardon, the sentences handed down to these activists, nearly all of whom had no prior criminal background, were indeed extreme. Williams’ conviction, for example, was the second longest prison sentence handed down to someone charged with a FACE Act violation in recent years. And despite the fact that she was a stay-at-home mother with a two-year-old daughter at home, she was denied the ability to remain at home on bail while her case was being appealed, with the judge reportedly telling Williams she was considered a “threat” to the community.
As a result, Williams was forced to leave her husband and young daughter and surrender herself to a federal prison facility nearly four hours from her family.
Williams said the government’s actions in and out of the courtroom made it clear the case against her wasn’t about upholding the FACE Act or any other law, but about enforcing a political agenda.
“In America, if we don’t agree with or don’t like someone, we don’t just automatically treat them like a criminal. But [the Biden administration] didn’t agree with me on abortion, so they said, ‘I’m going to take her away from her family, and throw her in jail, and treat her like an animal,’” she said.
The young mother argued the legal facts only prove this point. The charges against her stemmed from a 2020 pro-life protest outside a New York City abortion facility. Though the government claimed Williams “repeatedly intimidated and interfered with individuals seeking and providing critical reproductive health services,” including by “physically blocking access to clinics, threatening staff, and by force,” Williams said her mission that day was simply to exercise her First Amendment right to speak freely.
Several police officers were even present at the demonstration and did not feel the need to interfere, Williams pointed out. Nor did anyone from the U.S. attorney’s office in New York feel the need to question any of the pro-life activists or Planned Parenthood employees involved that day.
In fact, two years passed before the Biden administration even decided to take up the case against Williams. The government then also accused Williams of injuring a woman who had been leaving the facility, but Williams said the allegation didn’t add up. The woman claimed her left hand had been crushed by Williams, but apparently did not feel the need to get it checked out for five days, Williams said. And when the case went to court, the woman allegedly changed her story on the stand to say Williams had injured her right hand, not her left hand.
“I was just there to preach and let it be known that while everything else was shut down because of COVID, abortion was still going on,” Williams said. “We just wanted to raise our voices for that.”
Williams said she felt as though she was being silenced — even persecuted.
But despite the “devastating” physical and mental toll her prison sentence had on her, Williams said she trusted her husband — her “champion” — to continue fighting for her and caring for their daughter, and in her faith to see her through.
“I just heard the Lord minister to me — no weapon formed against me shall prosper. But that took a while to register because it felt like they were prospering,” she shared.
Now that she’s been pardoned and released from prison, Williams said she plans to keep speaking boldly about the causes she believes in — because “that’s my right.”
“You know, when Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den, the goal was for him to be devoured. The goal was for me to be devoured and consumed, too,” she said. “But it didn’t happen.”
