Conservatives Are Defending the Witch Trials Now
6.8.26
Click to skip ahead: Influencer Faces Death Threats After Sharing Abortion Story; In the States: Texas, Idaho, Rhode Island & More; Fetal Personhood Hits…Illinois; Meet the Creeps: Arizona Rep. Nick Kupper; Ballot Box: Colorado, Arizona & Kansas; Turning Point USA Speaker Defends Witch Trials
Influencer Faces Death Threats After Sharing Abortion Story
When I say anti-abortion violence and harassment is on the rise, I’m not just talking about threats against clinics and providers.
Last week, the popular YouTuber Jesse Ridgway shared that his wife, Ashley, had an abortion after getting a Down syndrome diagnosis. In a post on X, he wrote that they “made a difficult decision that we believe in the long-run will be beneficial for our family.”
Since then, that post has been viewed nearly 25 million times and Ridgway and his family have gotten a torrent of hate, harassment, and death threats. Ultra-conservative pundit Matt Walsh called Ridgway’s social media post “the most evil thing I’ve ever read on this platform,” and anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson—who wants abortion patients to be charged with murder—said Ridgway was a “monster of a man.” Even House Speaker Mike Johnson weighed in, calling the couple’s medical trauma and family decision “evil.”
Ridgway says they now sleep next to a gun.
“I’ve never seen such hate and vitriol for two people grieving the loss of their unborn child and making an impossible decision. The last 24 hours have exposed a side of humanity that is deeply disturbing. Being called ‘murderous pieces of s--t, evil, compared to Hitler’ and receiving NON-STOP DEATH THREATS.”
As The New York Times points out, the couple did not make an unusual choice: about 74% of those who receive a Down syndrome diagnosis end their pregnancies. And while the disability rights community has pushed back against some common misconceptions about the health outcomes for those with Down syndrome, that’s an issue of needing more education, awareness, and systemic support—not less abortion access.
Unfortunately, what this family is facing is completely predictable. The anti-abortion movement has been co-opting disability rights for years as a way to restrict access and villainize patients—a tactic that’s ramped up significantly since the end of Roe.
Remember when Kate Cox’s story went viral? Even though her fetus had no chance at survival, the Texas mom was prevented from getting an abortion in her home state. In response to Cox’s lawsuit seeking care, anti-abortion activists accused her of wanting to “kill” her “disabled child.”
Those attacks were part of a broader strategy: back in 2024, I warned that anti-abortion groups had begun calling non-viable pregnancies “disabled children,” and framing abortion restrictions as a disability rights issue.
Why focus on nonviable pregnancies? Because grieving families with doomed pregnancies are the hardest to demonize. If they can recast those abortions as “killing a disabled child,” then it’s that much easier to make a monster out of a family like Ridgway’s for ending a pregnancy with a survivable diagnosis.
It’s also important to note that this is happening in a moment when Republicans are introducing bills to punish abortion patients as murderers—do we really think that kind of normalization and rhetoric doesn’t have consequences?
For more on how the anti-abortion movement co-opts disability rights, watch “Anti-Abortion Glossary” here.
In the States: Texas, Idaho, Rhode Island & More
Well this is interesting. With the Texas Republican convention kicking off this week, one of the state’s most powerful anti-abortion groups is urging the GOP to ditch abortion ‘abolitionists’—and to promise it won’t punish abortion patients.
Remember: just last week, Abortion, Every Day broke the news that the Republican Party of Texas was openly backing an extremist group that wants abortion patients to face the death penalty. Abolish Abortion Texas isn’t only sponsoring this week’s convention—a few years back, it also successfully lobbied the state GOP to write an “equal protection” plank into the official party platform.
Now Texas Alliance for Life wants Republicans to scrap that plank. The group calls on the GOP to adopt new language that “opposes criminal penalties” against abortion patients and characterizes prison sentences and the death penalty as “inconsistent with compassion, counterproductive to enforcement, and contrary to the pro-life movement’s commitment to protecting both mother and child.”
Naturally, Abolish Abortion Texas is pissed off. A few weeks ago, it accused the Alliance of using compassion “as a smokescreen to rip equal protection for preborn babies.”
I’ll be curious to see how this plays out, because it really does put Texas Republicans in a difficult position: if they don’t agree to the new plank, they’re admitting (even more so than before) that they want to send abortion patients to jail. If they do agree, they risk the wrath of a seriously extreme organization that has put a lot of time and effort into lobbying for this equal protection plank.
I’ll keep you updated as things move forward, but a quick question: anyone know where Texas Right to Life is in all of this? Are they staying on the sidelines?
Speaking of radically anti-abortion states, the legal challenge against Idaho’s ban kicked off in a federal court today. Idaho’s law is one of the nation’s strictest; and the state has lost more than a third of its OBGYNs since the ban took effect.
I’ve reported on this suit before: maternal fetal medicine specialist Dr. Stacy Seyb and his attorneys argue that Idaho’s ban violates the U.S. Constitution, and that abortion isn’t just protected to save someone’s life—but to preserve their health. That includes cases where pregnancy worsens existing conditions, could lead to suicide, or involves fatal or severe fetal diagnoses. Seyb says denying those patients care is both unconstitutional and discriminatory.
We should know more tomorrow about how the oral arguments went, so keep an eye on your inboxes.
There’s much better news out of Rhode Island: the state Senate has passed legislation to protect providers by allowing them to keep their names off prescription labels for abortion pills.
Sponsored by Sen. Pamela J. Lauria, S 2033A lets a practice’s name appear on the label instead of the prescriber’s. It’s a vital protection, especially now—as Republican attorneys general like Louisiana’s Liz Murrill try to extradite abortion providers from pro-choice states.
“Some states have not only restricted their own citizens’ rights to healthcare, they have not stopped at their own borders in attacking reproductive freedom,” Sen. Lauria said. New York, Colorado, Vermont, Maine, and Washington have passed similar protections.
The bill now heads to the Rhode Island House. I’ll keep you posted as it moves forward.
Quick hits:
The Guardian reports on the Illinois woman who was left with no fallopian tubes after being denied treatment for ectopic pregnancy;
KGOU has more on the extreme new Oklahoma law that makes it a felony to dispense abortion pills or intend to;
Finally, Florida police are ramping up their use of Flock automatic license plate readers—which I’m sure won’t be a total disaster for women at all.
Fetal Personhood Hits…Illinois
Well this is worrying! An Illinois man has been sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to “voluntary manslaughter of an unborn child.”
Thirty-two-year-old Emerson Evans admitted to drugging his girlfriend with abortion medication, causing her to lose her seven-week pregnancy. But instead of going to prison for assaulting his girlfriend, Evans will be jailed for “killing” her embryo. In other words, this woman wasn’t the victim of a crime—her pregnancy was.
In Illinois.
Pregnancy Justice flagged Illinois in their 2022 state-by-state analysis of fetal homicide laws, pointing out that the state created “distinct offenses of intentional homicide and voluntary manslaughter by causing the loss of a pregnancy.” As the report notes, these kinds of criminal statutes define fetuses, embryos, and fertilized eggs as people—under the auspices of protecting pregnant people from violence.
But not only are these statutes often used to criminalize people for their own pregnancy outcomes, they codify fetal personhood! Which we all know is very, very bad!
Listen, Illinois is one of the country’s most pro-choice states; it has incredible protections for providers and patients, and about 1 in 4 abortion patients who leave their states for abortion go to Illinois for care. That’s why a story like this is so distressing: it’s way past time for Illinois leaders to get shitty fetal personhood laws off the books and make clear that it’s pregnant women who are the victims of domestic violence—not their fertilized eggs or embryos.
As Dana Sussman, senior vice president for Pregnancy Justice, told me:
“What happened to this woman is horrific. And yet, the defendant did not plead guilty to any crime connected to the harm done to her—the person who had her bodily autonomy violated and who likely experienced a deep emotional trauma. She is just a footnote in this story.”
Meet the Creeps: Arizona Rep. Nick Kupper
A few years ago, I wrote a column called “The Worst Guy You Know.” I asked people to think about the biggest jerk they ever came across: the class bully, the ignorant boss, the guy who likes to play ‘devil’s advocate’, etc. Then I asked people to imagine he was their state representative or local prosecutor. Because that’s what we’re dealing with right now: the world’s most obnoxious assholes legislating our bodies.
I thought of that column when I read this story about Rep. Nick Kupper, who used his colleague’s birth announcement as an opportunity to shame her for having an abortion.
Here’s the short version: about a year ago, Arizona Rep. Anna Abeytia shared her personal story on the statehouse floor in opposition to an anti-abortion bill. Abeytia said she had ended a pregnancy recently, and suggested it was done to save her health and life. “That was the hardest decision that I had to make for my family and particularly my daughter, so that I can stay alive to be a mother to her,” she said.
Then, last week, Arizona House Democrats shared this picture of Abeytia voting with her two-week-old son in her arms:
In response to this very sweet image, Rep. Kupper—a Republican—tweeted the following:
“This is wonderful to see a mother caring for her kids. However, it would have been wonderful if all of her kids had been given the same opportunity at life. Abortion is hideous.”
Like I said: the worst guy you know. If you’d like to let Kupper know what you think of his tweet, you can email him at nkupper@azleg.gov, or call his office at 602-926-3512.
Ballot Box: Colorado, Arizona & Kansas
The two Republicans running for governor in Colorado know enough to keep their mouths relatively shut on abortion. During a Rocky Mountain PBS event/debate, Republican state Reps. Scott Bottoms and Barbara Kirkmeyer—both gubernatorial hopefuls—claimed they’d respect the 2024 ballot measure that codified abortion protections in the state constitution.
“I will follow the will of the voters, and I will uphold our Constitution,” Kirkmeyer said. That is, quite literally, what they all say. Republicans running in pro-choice states frequently claim they’ll respect the rule of law—but we’ve all seen how little Republicans care about the will of voters.
U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani from Arizona is also trying to lay low on abortion. Since the end of Roe, Ciscomani, who represents the state’s 6th Congressional District, has worked hard to brand himself a “moderate” on the issue—calling the 1864 ban that the state Supreme Court revived in 2024 “archaic,” and running an ad insisting, "I trust women.”
But that’s just talk. Ciscomani celebrated the end of Roe, voted to defund Planned Parenthood, voted to restrict service members’ access to abortion care, and holds an “A+” rating from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
That’s why Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju was in Arizona last week—to call out the hypocrisy and back his Democratic opponent, JoAnna Mendoza.
“They now know they have to hide it, they have to pretend to be a moderate, they have to pretend to compromise. They know now that it’s a powerful issue that their own base opposes them on.”
Kansas gubernatorial candidate Vicki Schmidt is yet another Republican trying to soft-pedal her extremism: she’s been talking about “letting the states decide,” opposing “abortion on demand,” and supporting “reasonable exceptions.”
That palatable messaging strategy cost her the endorsement of Kansans for Life this week: the group came out in support of her opponent Ty Masterson, warning against “the frightening scenario of radical pro-abortion Vicki Schmidt” winning.
Turning Point USA Speaker Defends the Witch Trials
This is almost funny. Almost. Journalist Madeline Peltz caught this incredible moment at the Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit yesterday—when speaker Noleen Sedra defended the witch trials.
Sedra claimed that “feminism has Satanic roots,” and that women were executed in witch trials “because they were killing children.”
“They were midwives, they were bringing abortions…That is why the church was burning women at the stake—because they were torturing and murdering children in the womb.”
Again, while this is easy to mock, it’s a lot less funny when you remember just how powerful, well-resourced, and influential TPUSA really is. Here’s a clip if you can stomach it:
I wish Democrats would lean HARD into abortion rights. It's a winning strategy.
"Feminism has satanic roots' ??? nearly choked on my coffee reading that one. Gave me a bit of a laugh after so much grim news. I have so much admiration for the women why they needed access to an abortion. It takes a lot of courage to talk openly in the current environment. These are people making tough adult decisions that would test all of us. Thanks again Jessica