On January 23, 2025, Bevelyn Beatty Williams walked as a free woman out of a federal prison in Alabama, and into the arms of her waiting husband Rickey, their young daughter, and her best friend and fellow pro-life activist, Edmee Chavannes. It was a joyous moment full of gratitude following years of persecution (followed by prosecution) for her pro-life efforts.
And in a way, it marked a new beginning.
“I was in the TV room,” she told Live Action News of the moment she learned newly inaugurated President Donald Trump had signed pardons for her and 22 other pro-lifers on January 23. “Breaking news came on and he started signing pardons and I started screaming, ‘I’m going home!'” The news reached her at about 2:45 p.m., and she was walking out of federal prison by 11 p.m. that same day.
It had been three months since Williams first reported to a federal prison, four hours from her home, for being convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. She had been sentenced to 41 months for charges relating to a two-day protest outside a New York City Planned Parenthood in June 2020.
Williams, along with Chavannes, her co-founder of At the Well Ministries, was engaging in pro-life activism when Williams said during a live Facebook stream that she would “terrorize” Planned Parenthood. As Live Action News previously reported, Williams’ attorney, Aaron Mysliwiec, a criminal and civil litigation lawyer with Miedel & Mysliwiec, stated that Williams’ words that day were “rhetorical,” adding that the women were “not threatening anyone with weapons, not chaining themselves to doors[.]”
“First Amendment speech doesn’t require you to be meek and modest,” he said. “You are allowed to be loud and proud in somebody’s face and say things in a way that makes them uncomfortable.”
However, Williams explained that while she was standing on the sidewalk, a woman from inside the facility opened the door and “whacked me in the back.” Williams added, “She never said, ‘Excuse me’ or made me aware that she was there. When I leaned back, she claims I slammed her hand. She didn’t go to Urgent Care until five days later and on the stand, she said it was the right hand that was slammed but in the picture, it was her left. I don’t believe she’s being as honest as she should.”
Retaliation for the overturning of Roe
The incident was not significant enough to persuade the New York Police Department officers present at the protest to arrest Williams, and no one from the U.S. attorney’s office so much as questioned the women or Planned Parenthood. Two years later, things changed when the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade.
“It was 100% retaliation,” said Williams of the delayed federal charges. “No question about it.”
It was December 2022 — two and half years after the protest, but just six months after Dobbs — when the Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) filed FACE Act charges against Williams and Chavannes for that June 2020 protest.
Before Dobbs, “Nobody from the U.S. attorney’s office does anything. Nobody thinks it’s worth their time,” Mysliwiec previously told Live Action News, adding, “Then after Dobbs, one could argue, the district wanted a case to prosecute under FACE and went two years into the past. It begs the question: If this was such a serious incident, why didn’t they investigate in the weeks after it happened?”
There’s only one reason Mysliewiec can see. “It’s because Dobbs hadn’t happened,” he said. “The key fact that changes their determination is what the Supreme Court Justices did, which should not be the reason to go and prosecute Bev Williams.”
After pardoning the pro-lifers, the Trump DOJ directed federal prosecutors to limit enforcement of the FACE Act. In a memo issued on Friday, it instructed prosecutors to enforce the law only in “extraordinary circumstances” or in instances when death, extreme bodily harm, or significant property damage result.
Williams would like to see the entire FACE Act gone. “Congress needs to vote,” she said. “The whole thing needs to be repealed. Period.”
Legal battles still to be won
Williams also has some additional battles to face concerning her previous activism.
She wants to address the aftermath of a civil lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James that led to an agreement prohibiting Williams and Chavannes from entering an 18-foot by 30-foot area around Planned Parenthood of Greater New York’s Manhattan facility premises. Any future violations of that agreement would result in a $5,000 fine per violation, as well as all attorneys’ fees and related costs incurred by the Office of the Attorney General, and the possibility of civil and criminal contempt.
If the FACE Act is repealed, it could void that agreement, she said.
She’s also dealing with a lawsuit from abortion business Carafem, which sued her for calling them “murderers” because it claims her words amounted to an “assault.” She hopes to get that suit dismissed, but doesn’t have an attorney working on it yet.
“They are taking freedom of speech and calling it assault,” she said.
Activism beyond the pro-life movement
She may be fresh out of prison, but Williams still has activism on her mind that extends beyond the pro-life movement.
She explained that in prison, the staff “did Christmas dinner and New Year’s dinner and that was nice, but I will say there has to be policy changes. They are very antagonistic [toward the inmates]. The inmates can’t curse at officers but officers curse at the inmates. … If they were having a bad day, they would make your day bad.”
Once she has been home for a while and settled, she would like to work to make multiple changes in the prison system to help inmates — but she’s not walking away from her anti-abortion work. Having had three abortions herself, Williams understands better than most the need to protect both preborn babies and women — and she’s ready to begin again.
“I want to be able to go to the clinic and do what I’ve been doing and practice freedom of speech,” she said. “There are more rallies to do and pro-lifers have to band together and be each other’s protection wall.”
She added, “In the pro-life movement, we have to stop criticizing each other and our different approaches and start working together. Donations [to pro-life groups] should start being advocated towards the help of other pro-lifers — not to take away from other expenses and programs, but there must be a way to help the little one out. We have to start sticking together.”
She continued:
When I first went to the clinic, I was louder than [pro-lifers] were used to. 150 abortions were scheduled and they were canceled because I was there. Women didn’t show up. I just wanted to be a witness. I didn’t realize how powerful it was [to be present outside of the abortion facility]. If we start banding together, we can do so much more.
For now, Williams is focused on being a wife to her “amazing” husband and a mom to her little girl who is “ecstatic” that her mother is home. She and her family are getting acclimated to being “normal” again.
As for her opinion of President Trump, Williams sees him as “a hero’s hero” and she is “so grateful for him.”
