The Mask is Off: Major Anti-Abortion Group Calls for Arrest of Abortion Patients

Students for Life says it should be "an easy vote"

The mask is off. After years of insisting they’d never punish women, one of the nation’s leading anti-abortion groups has unceremoniously endorsed legislation to imprison abortion patients.

Last week, Students for Life (SFL) president Kristan Hawkins “celebrated” SB 1095 in South Carolina—a bill that would jail abortion providers, funders, helpers, and patients. The group’s press release, notably, leaves that last part out.

Under the “Unborn Child Protection Act,” women who have abortions would be punished on misdemeanor criminal charges. Even rape victims and those with nonviable pregnancies would face two years of prison time for having an abortion.

Still, Hawkins says, “This should be an easy vote.”

The endorsement marks the biggest shift in anti-abortion politics in decades, and leaves Republicans with a difficult choice ahead of the midterms: do they align themselves with a movement explicitly calling for the punishment of women?

Because let’s be clear: while Students for Life is radical, they don’t operate on the fringes—they’re one of the movement’s largest organizing machines. With more than 1,500 campus chapters in all 50 states, the group works closely with state and federal lawmakers and has helped craft model legislation across the country.

As extreme as SFL is—they want to outlaw birth control and claim Americans are “drinking abortions”—they’re also powerhouse policy players. They are the anti-abortion movement’s mainstream.

That’s why this move is such a big deal. When I reached out to a few groups that track abortion legislation, they agreed: this appears to be the first time SFL has thrown its considerable weight behind a bill that would punish patients.

Still, the news shouldn’t come as a total shock. Hawkins admitted on a podcast last year that the vast majority of anti-abortion activists, including herself, want women jailed for abortion. That’s why, she said, they’re “working to change culture” and elect “courageous” leaders to help get voters on board.

About a year ago, I warned that this push to shift abortion’s Overton Window was accelerating:

“[The anti-abortion strategy] was to work on American culture, seeding a years-long shift that would make it easier for them to arrest patients without serious backlash. Now, with abortion numbers rising—and anti-abortion organizations and legislators desperate to stop what they see as mass disobedience—I believe they’re fast-tracking that plan.”

The last few months have made it unmistakable. Pregnancy-related arrests are soaring, even without laws that explicitly punish women. ‘Equal protection’ legislation to prosecute patients as murderers has been on the rise, with over a dozen states considering such bills over the past year.

The so-called abortion ‘abolitionists’ who craft and lobby for these bills—which could mean life in prison or the death penalty—are also becoming more mainstream. The men behind the movement are writing op-eds, speaking at Turning Point USA events—even being elected to office. Just a few weeks ago, Abortion, Every Day discovered that Heartbeat International—the largest crisis pregnancy center network in the country—had aligned themselves with an ‘abolitionist’ group.

And while Hawkins and SFL have publicly squabbled with ‘abolitionists’ in the past, it seems like there’s increasing overlap in their strategies. After all, it was at SFL’s January conference where activist Abby Johnson launched her Make Abortion Murder Again campaign—calling for women who end their pregnancies to face homicide charges.

And the South Carolina legislation SFL is directing their followers to support? That started as an ‘equal protection’ bill. SB 323 failed to pass because Sen. Richard Cash couldn’t get fellow South Carolina Republicans on board with giving women the death penalty. SB 1095 is his version of a “compromise”—a bill he hopes will be more palatable because it ‘only’ charges abortion patients with a misdemeanor.

For anti-abortion groups, the tactic appears to be working. Pro-Life Greenville opposed SB 323 last year, but is endorsing SB 1095. SC Citizens for Life also opposed SB 323, but has been silent on the bill’s latest iteration.

Here’s the thing: whether it’s for two years or a lifetime, prison for abortion is still prison. And anti-abortion leaders are never going to be able to get voters on board. Even Hawkins herself knows that. She told the Associated Press last year, “If you want more pro-abortion Democrats to win future elections, then keep talking about putting women in jail, by all means.”

So what’s changed? Maybe Hawkins thinks the culture has shifted enough to openly call for punishing patients. More likely, SFL believes they can float a trial balloon without anyone noticing. It’s certainly not a coincidence that their press release doesn’t mention what the bill would do to women.

Now that people are paying attention, the question is what comes next: will SFL drop support for the legislation? Defend their position? Or quietly hand Republican candidates new talking points about how many years in prison counts as a “compromise”?

No matter what happens, we should remember this: the anti-abortion movement has always been about punishment. Whether it’s screaming at women outside clinics, forcing them to undergo unnecessary ultrasounds, arresting them for miscarriages, or abortion bans themselves—which, at their core, are punishments for women who dared to have sex.

Jailing patients was always going to be the next step. But groups like SFL, Heartbeat International—and your local extremist lawmaker—are all counting on Americans being too overwhelmed to notice, or too checked out to care.

We can’t let that happen; the anti-abortion movement has crossed a line. It’s one voters shouldn’t forget, and one every Republican should have to answer for.