President Donald Trump on Thursday issued pardons for nearly two dozen people who were convicted for blocking access to and temporarily shutting down abortion clinics, some of whom are currently serving federal sentences. “They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people,” Trump said. “This is a great honor to sign this.”

Rally organizers estimated a crowd of up to 150,000 would turn out and send a message to Trump, who is a complicated figure for the antiabortion movement.

These are heady times for participants in the annual March for Life. Anti-abortion protestors gathered for decades to call for an appeal of Roe v. Wade, which had provided a constitutional right for an abortion.