John Hinshaw should be one angry man. He served 17 months in jail, nowhere near his family on Long Island, for praying and offering help to women in unplanned pregnancies at an abortion center.
Yet he has only gratitude; for being home with his family, for the inspiration to defend unborn life, for his lawyers, and for all those who prayed for him and other incarcerated pro-life advocates.
Hinshaw, 69, was released from jail January 24, 2025, amid President Donald Trump's pardon of 23 pro-life activists charged and sentenced under the FACE Act by the Biden administration’s Department of Justice.
Ironically, he was due to begin supervised release that day.
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Hinshaw was sentenced to 21 months in jail in May 2024 for his part in protesting abortion the facility operated by abortionist Cesare Santangelo, who conducted abortions through the ninth month, and the center where five late-term aborted children, who may have been either killed by illegal partial-birth abortion or after being born alive, were found.
While Hinshaw was in jail, two new grandchildren were born into his family. This week he got to meet granddaughter Maisie Grace, born January 6, 2025, to his daughter Bernadette.
The date of Hinshaw’s scheduled release coincided with the 2025 national March for Life. He'd hoped that a pardon would come earlier in the week, perhaps as early as Inauguration Day, so he could attend the March for Life. While that didn't happen, he still has only gratitude for Trump's action which drew attention to the jailed pro-life activists, the weaponization of law under the Biden administration, and the March for Life.
Hinshaw’s son John Paul had already driven from Long Island to Massachusetts to pick up his dad the next morning when the announcement came that Trump had pardoned the pro-life activists.
The jail staff woke Hinshaw at midnight and told him he could leave. Not long after he was greeted outside by his son, following having not seen him for a year-and-a-half. The two stopped at Wendy's for some celebratory fast food and then watched the semi-finals for one of their favorite sports, tennis.
At the Alexandria, Va., court where Hinshaw was first jailed, he was given a tablet that had limited options - books, music, radio, but no internet. John says he found a strong Christian presence or emphasis in this jail.
"The administrators must have been Christians,” he told Pregnancy Help News. “There were regular services, talks and concerts from various local denominations, and a bible study group."
But from there he would go to a Pennsylvania jail, and after three weeks there Hinshaw was moved to Devins, Massachusetts.
Not one to lay around feeling sorry for himself, he and fellow pro-life inmate Will Goodman began a bible study group. A growing number of men joined in regularly, and as a result, more men began attending Mass whenever it was arranged by the Catholic prison ministry.
Hinshaw found that his fellow inmates were always floored when they learned what he and Goodman were in jail for, because of such an extreme punishment for merely trying to help women in unplanned pregnancies.
“They just couldn't get over it," he said.
This topic generated discussions on the unborn, abortion, pregnancy assistance, and laws used inconsistently in a political manner.
Hinshaw raves about his first lawyer, a court-appointed attorney who was unexpectedly pro-life and who really put on a very good defense for him before the Thomas More Society picked up the case.
Hinshaw remarked on what has him grateful.
To simply be able to, “sit with my wonderful, courageous wife, whom I have loved since I first met her in 1979.”
“From that St. Patrick’s Day in an Irish pub, we have never gone so long without seeing each other,” he said. “From that first night, when I could not believe that such a beautiful woman was talking to me, to today, when I cannot believe she actually married me and gave me six children.”
When asked what he missed most besides his family, Hinshaw came back with a surprise response. It wasn’t decent food, the beach, the freedom to do what he wanted such as watching sports, his own home, the internet, or being outdoors. Rather, waking up in prison each day with at least 100 other men he missed the faces of women and children.
He said he also missed "real coffee" and being able to attend Mass regularly, as Sunday Mass couldn't always be expected in jail.
Tweet This: After 17 months in jail pro-lifer John Hinshaw is grateful for his family, the inspiration to defend unborn life, and all who prayed for him
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE, Act, was used against pro-lifers including Hinshaw by the Biden DOJ.
Signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994, the FACE Act, was originally intended to target demonstrations at abortion facilities but the DOJ has stated that it applies as well to pro-life pregnancy help centers.
Specifically: The FACE Act is not about abortions. The statute protects all patients, providers, and facilities that provide reproductive health services, including pro-life pregnancy counseling services and any other pregnancy support facility providing reproductive health care.
The Act defines “reproductive health services” as services “provided in a hospital, clinic, physician's office, or other facility, and includes medical, surgical, counseling, or referral services relating to the human reproductive system (including services relating to pregnancy or the termination of a pregnancy).”
However, prosecutions under FACE have been overwhelmingly against pro-life individuals. Hundreds of instances of arson, firebombing, property damage, graffiti and more at pregnancy centers, including destruction caught on surveillance video, have gone largely unaddressed, while fully 97% of FACE prosecutions from 1994-2024 were against pro-life citizens,
Hinshaw communicated with LifeSiteNews just before his release regarding the spiritual aspects of his ordeal.
“My first spiritual insight during this ordeal is not new to most Christians, but not being the sharpest spiritual intellect, it was surprising to me how close God became to me and how concrete were His actions,” he said. “In so many small, daily ways, He made His Presence felt.”
“Through these interactions, Christ drew me along the way, leaving behind the ruins of a dead city filled with injustice, towards a real, active, lifegiving Grace,” Hinshaw continued. “We left behind my anger at the injustice and opened me to where I have to go. He slowly introduced me to repentance, ransom, expiation, and that ‘deeper magic from the dawn of time’ that C.S. Lewis gave us from Narnia.”
Since returning home to his family on Long Island, Hinshaw has already been back to pray at the Planned Parenthood in Hempstead, New York, where he's been a regular presence for years. Now he and his wife Brenda are planning a trip to Mississippi to meet his other new granddaughter Charlotte Millie born to his daughter MaryKate.
