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CHICAGO (AP) President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would pardon anti-abortion activists convicted of blocking 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.”

The pardoners were involved within the invasion and blockade of a clinic in Washington in October 2020.

Lauren Handy was sentenced to almost five years in prison for leading the blockade, leading blockaders to band along with locks and chains to dam the clinic's doors. A nurse sprained her ankle when an individual pushed her as she entered the clinic, and a girl was accosted by one other obstructionist while she was in labor pain, prosecutors said. Police found five fetuses in Handy's home after she was charged.

Trump pardoned Handy and her nine co-defendants: Jonathan Darnel of Virginia; Jay Smith, John Hinshaw and William Goodman, all of New York; Joan Bell of New Jersey; Paulette Harlow and Jean Marshall, each of Massachusetts; Heather Idoni of Michigan; and Herb Geraghty of Pennsylvania.

In the primary week of Trump's presidency, anti-abortion advocates have increased calls for Trump to pardon protesters charged with violating Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, which is meant to guard abortion clinics from obstruction and threats. The 1994 law was passed at a time when clinic protests and blockades were on the rise, as was violence against abortion providers, reminiscent of the murder of Dr. David Gunn in 1993.

Trump specifically mentioned Harlow In a speech in June Criticizing former President Joe Biden's Justice Department for pursuing charges against protesters involved in blockades.

“A lot of people are in prison over this,” he said in June, adding, “We will take care of them immediately.”

Abortion rights advocates hit Trump's pardons as evidence of his opposition to abortion access, despite his vague, contradictory statements on the problem as he tried to navigate the campaign trail between anti-abortion allies and nearly all of Americans who support abortion rights to seek out a middle ground.

“Donald Trump on the campaign trail tried to have it both ways – bragging about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade while saying he wouldn't take action on abortion” The national abortion rights organization Reproductive Freedom for All. “We never believed that to be true, and this shows us that we were right.”

SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser thanked Trump for the “immediate promise” to pardon the protesters and argued their prosecutions were political.

Legal group Thomas More Society argued that the face law defendants they represent had been “wrongfully imprisoned” and were “imprisoned”. In a January letter to Trump. The group had assured the defendants that Trump would review their cases and pardon them when he took office.

“Today, freedom rings in our great nation,” said Steve Crampton, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, adding: “What happened to them can never be erased, but today’s pardons are an enormous step toward restoring justice .”

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, amongst Trump's most loyal supporters, called the prosecution of anti-abortion protesters “a grotesque attack on the principles of this country” and urged Trump to pardon them as they read the stories of such anti-abortion protesters on the Senate floor Thursday . He singled out Eva Edl, who was involved in a 2021 blockade of the Tennessee clinic and whose story has drawn attention from the most important national anti-abortion groups.

Hawley said He “had a great conversation” with Trump on Thursday morning concerning the protesters.

News of the pardons comes ahead of Friday's annual pro-life anti-abortion protest in Washington, where the president will address the gang in a video.

Health employees from across the Bay Area gathered at Stanford University Monday morning as a part of a nationwide “pop-up clinic to treat genocide-related illnesses” and in protest of the continued war in Gaza.

About 40 people gathered on Stanford Medical School's Alumni Lawn around 10 a.m. Several doctors wore their white coats, wore keffiyehs around their necks and cloth shields on their backs. The signs read “No more bomb, no more hospital, no more child” and other statements in red ink.

RELATED: Israel arrests the director of one in all the last functioning hospitals within the northern Gaza Strip in a raid

“As a Muslim, Arab, American mother and doctor, she witnessed the targeted killing of health care providers, the killing of civilians, children and even young men and women, and the targeted destruction of hospitals and bombing of ambulances by the Israeli Defense Forces.” is absolute disgusting,” said Dr. Yusra Husain, assistant professor at Stanford Medical School. “We as healthcare providers refuse to normalize genocide. Every death and every child burned is a shock to our system.”

According to a press release, the gathering was a part of a nationwide Doctors Against Genocide movement, wherein doctors from across the country called in sick to demand an end to the war in Gaza and the discharge of 450 health care employees held captive by Israel. After just a few speeches, the gathering moved to White Plaza at Stanford, where doctors and community members once more arrange their table and signs.

The gatherings saw the inauguration of the Kamal Adwan Pop-up Clinic for Genocide-Related Illnesses, where health professionals distributed guidance on learn how to treat genocide-related illnesses: “the immense moral injury, emotional trauma and grief experienced by health workers, “when we witness genocide and other human rights violations against patients and colleagues, for example in Gaza,” says a printed guide distributed on the stand. The guide also advised doctors on learn how to provide medical certificates to employees searching for leave for “genocidal disease” and gave patients advice on learn how to request these certificates.

Dr. Rupa Marya, a professor of medication at UCSF, said she was suspended from her job for “speaking about the genocide in Gaza.” She added that her research examined how chronic inflammatory diseases similar to heart disease and dementia are brought on by damage from societal conflict.

“Racism creates structures in society that drive inflammation in marginalized people who bear the greatest burden of chronic inflammatory disease,” she said. “Genocide is the most egregious and blatant expression of racism and is literally making us sick.”

“Attacks on health infrastructure and health workers accelerate the destruction of the Palestinian people and are an act of genocide,” Marya added.

UCSF didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on Marya's suspension Monday afternoon.

The pop-up clinic offered steps of a “treatment plan”: The plan calls for attacks on hospitals in Gaza to stop, for kidnapped medical examiners to be released, and for medical examiners in Gaza to be protected. It also calls for an arms embargo in addition to aid and reconstruction for the areas occupied by Israel.

“I am tired of genocide, tired of the silence of our government as it pushes the murderous attack while making grand promises of peace and humanity,” said Hilton Obenzinger, a retired professor and associate director emeritus of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project Stanford . “I'm tired of how our government doesn't listen to its own people who want to end the war, how it doesn't listen to the United Nations, how it doesn't listen to human rights groups, and how it doesn't listen to American Jews who are crying out for real peace. “Ceasefire.”

Hussain also outlined protesters' specific demands for Stanford: that the university condemn “the genocide in Palestine” and the attacks on health care employees and facilities, condemn “ongoing medical apartheid in Palestine,” and adopt an ethical procurement policy that eliminates Includes purchases from corporations “involved in Israeli war crimes,” she said.

Stanford University officials didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on the list of demands.

“There are absolutely no words that can adequately express the pain and depravity of this violence,” said Rochelle Mclaughlin, a former adjunct professor at San Jose State University’s College of Health and Human Sciences who recently resigned. “I implore my colleagues in academia and health to speak out against genocide.”

Mclaughlin added that she was “deeply horrified, heartbroken and angry” as she witnessed massacres and mutilations of youngsters within the Palestinian territories.

“We cannot and will not give up our care for each other, and as we care for each other, this violence makes us sick, and so we take up this cause to heal, to address our own inflammation, and to help each other,” Marya said. “This genocide is literally making us all sick.”

Originally published: January 6, 2025 at 3:33 pm PST

When the Rotary Club of San Jose was in search of a brand new location for the RotoCare Bay Area medical clinic, its members decided to supply the services to individuals who need them fairly than bringing them to an inpatient facility.

Five years later, the Rotary Club, in collaboration with Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County and the Order of Malta, opened its mobile Rotary Medical Clinic on October 17 at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in downtown San Jose.

The mobile clinic is designed to bring health care on to vulnerable populations, including homeless, low-income families and immigrant communities at multiple locations throughout Santa Clara County. It will provide services reminiscent of health screenings, social services, advantages enrollment, behavioral health and other referrals.

“We wanted to identify a project that we believed would meet an urgent need,” San Jose Rotarian Vincent Sunzeri said on the grand opening ceremony. “We were looking for something that would have long-term impact and inspire a sense of pride and inspiration, and we believe the Rotary Mobile Medical Clinic does just that.”

“So when we deal with the problems of poverty… we have to deal with food and housing, access to social services, access to legal immigration services and access to employment,” Kepferle added.

The mobile clinic is the second joint project between Catholic Charities and the Rotary Club. The first was a mobile emergency vehicle in 2019. Sunzeri said one goal of the mobile clinic is to cut back the variety of medical emergencies amongst vulnerable populations.

“Let’s think about moving from episodic care to trying to transition people into the medical system,” he added. “That will be the true measure of our success.”

Originally published: October 20, 2024 at 7:08 am

An Irvine man who firebombed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa and planned but didn’t perform attacks on an influence substation in Orange and at Dodger Stadium during an LGBTQ Pride event was sentenced Thursday to 6 years in a federal prison.

Tibet Ergul, pleaded guilty earlier this yr for one felony count of conspiracy to wreck an energy facility and one misdemeanor count of intentionally damaging a reproductive health care facility. Two of Ergul's co-defendants also accepted plea deals and were sentenced to prison.

In the early morning hours of March 12, 2022, Ergul and Chance Brannon – a 24-year-old from San Juan Capistrano who was an lively Marine on the time – lit a Molotov cocktail and threw it at the doorway door of the Costa Mesa Planned Parenthood Clinic.

The two men – who were wearing masks – ran away as flames shot up from a wall next to the clinic door to the ceiling. Firefighters quickly extinguished the hearth without anyone being injured. But the damage from the hearth forced the clinic to cancel around 30 appointments the following day.

Federal officials had offered a $25,000 reward for information. An informant gave the FBI a text message through which Ergul allegedly admitted his role within the arson attack.

A search of Ergul and Brannon's digital devices led them to Xavier Batten, a 21-year-old Florida resident. Brannon and Ergul decided to attack the clinic and obtained the vital materials, prosecutors said, while Batten gave them advice on easy methods to construct the Molotov cocktail and urged them to perform the attack..

Ergul and Brannon desired to “make a statement about abortion” and “discourage pregnant women from having an abortion” in addition to “discourage doctors, staff and clinic employees from performing abortions,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.

In June 2022, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the 2 planned a second firebombing of one other Planned Parenthood clinic at an undisclosed location, but abandoned their efforts once they saw cops near the ability, prosecutors said.

As a part of his confession, Ergul admitted that he and Brannon had planned two more attacks but didn’t carry them out before their arrest.

Ergul admitted that he sent someone an aerial photo of a Southern California Edison substation in Orange and suggested doing a “3 a.m. drive-thru.” The pair wanted to wreck the substation in an try and take down Orange County's power grid, prosecutors wrote.

And Ergul admitted that he and Brannon discussed and researched the opportunity of an attack on the Dodger Stadium parking zone or electrical room on an evening the team was celebrating LGBTQ Pride. They considered constructing a remote-controlled explosive device, exchanged “sabotage manuals” and discussed conducting “dry runs” to “scout the stadium,” in response to Ergul's agreement.

The two men were arrested two days before a planned “Pride Night” at Dodger Stadium.

Ergul also admitted in his confession that he sent Brannon a letter through which he spoke of his desire to assassinate politicians and journalists. In the letter, he wrote: “The rifle is in a box in my room, waiting to be used in the coming race war,” prosecutors said.

“This defendant's hatred of others drove him to plan and carry out violence,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada wrote in an announcement after Ergul's conviction. “We will not allow bigoted intolerance to divide us.”

U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney, who handed down the sentence, said the defendant was not as “guilty” as Brannon, the leader of the attacks. “It is clear that Mr. Brannon had a negative influence on Mr. Ergul,” the judge said.

Ergul, who immigrated from Turkey, had trouble fitting in in Newport Beach, Carney said.

“He didn't fit in well with the teenagers in Newport Beach and was bullied,” he said. He also suffers from bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety disorder and ADHD, the judge added.

Carney praised Ergul for participating in classes and self-help programs while in prison.

“I want you to know that I am ashamed,” Ergul told Carney. “This country has given me everything. … In Turkey, I would not have had it and I squandered it all.” He added that he regretted doing something that “divides” people.

“I want to take responsibility for my actions,” he said. “I know what I did was wrong… I was educated, I was intelligent, I thought I was a productive member of society. But I just blocked it all out with my hatred.”

He asked to be sent to a jail where he could proceed his education and attend a drug rehabilitation program. Carney advisable him, declaring that his drug addiction influenced his behavior in committing crimes.

Carney told him: “You obviously have great potential, the way you write and speak… It is never too late to change and rehabilitate yourself.”

Noting that the defendant's father flew in from Turkey for Thursday's hearing, Carney said: “Mr. Ergul, in some ways you are a very lucky man. Despite everything you have done, there are people who love you very much and are coming to this hearing… It is a testament to how much they love you.”

Ergul still faces domestic violence charges in Arizona for attacking a roommate while under the influence of LSD, Carney said.

Last month, Brannon was sentenced to nine years in a federal prison. Earlier this month Batten was sentenced to 3 and a half years in prison.

An Orange County fertility clinic by chance destroyed embryos after they got here into contact with hydrogen peroxide while an worker was cleansing an incubator, in line with two lawsuits filed Thursday, April 18, by two couples.

The couples, who didn’t conceive after implanting the embryos in late January, are accusing FPG Labs, LLC – doing business as Ovation Fertility – of negligent representation, negligence, fraud, intentional misrepresentation and five other claims. The plaintiffs are identified within the lawsuits only by their initials. No damages amounts were mentioned.

Ovation Fertility operates 14 laboratories in 10 states, including one in Newport Beach where an worker “erroneously used hydrogen peroxide instead of a sterile solution in an incubator,” Adam Wolf, the couple's attorney, said in a news conference Thursday, calling the situation an “avoidable tragedy.” “.

The lawsuits allege that Ovation Fertility knew it had hired employees who were unsuitable, improperly trained, or unable to watch or use the embryo incubator.

The lawsuits say the couples “may no longer be able to have biologically related children due to defendants' conduct.”

In one lawsuit, a lady underwent two egg retrievals in October and November 2016, while within the second lawsuit, the lady underwent egg retrieval in April 2023, the lawsuits say.

Ovation Fertility didn’t reply to a request for comment. It was not known Thursday whether an attorney represented the clinic.

Of the 20 network labs listed on Ovation's website, the Newport Beach clinic is the just one in California.

The clinic describes itself as one in all the five largest in vitro fertilization providers within the United States and says it operates a “first-class laboratory” that uses “best practices” and operates to the “highest standards,” in line with plaintiffs' lawyers The allegations made within the lawsuits are false.