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Kristan Hawkins delivers The New York Times on June 24, 2022
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- Author: Holly Honderich
- Scroll, from Washington (USA) for BBC News
6 hours ago
Kristan Hawkins started sleeping in the office at age 23.
Years later, his organization Students for the Life of America (SFLA) grew into one of the largest and most influential antiabortion groups in the United States. And more than a decade later, she appeared before the US Supreme Court to announce to her triumphant supporters that the country’s right to abortion had been revoked.
But in 2008, SFLA’s headquarters were in Arlington, Virginia. And the nearest town where Hawkins and her husband could buy a home was 90 minutes away.
At first she tried to make the trip every day, leaving home at 5 a.m. and returning at 8 p.m. But the journey was too long and the petrol too expensive.
So she bought a cheap Ikea sofa and wondered if she could fit 30 hours of work in two days before going home to sleep. Hawkins showered at a nearby gym and took advantage of the new couch to take a nap.
And when she found out there was also a roach nest in the office, she bought a sleep mask and started spending nights with the lights on to keep them out.
“It was awful, awful…” says her husband Jonathan about that time. They had only been married for two years.
But Kristan Hawkins was relentless and had a busy schedule. She wanted the Roe v. Wade case to be overturned, thereby removing abortion rights in the country that had been protected for nearly half a century.
In June 2022 she made it. Abortion rights activists say Hawkins’ activism has helped deny an estimated 20 million women access to abortions and plunged the country into a public health crisis.
Now Hawkins has a new, more ambitious goal: to make abortion unthinkable and ban it throughout the United States.
Hawkins has worked hard in the year since the Roe vs. Wade case was dismissed. She increased the size and reach of the SFLA, and used that power to pressure state legislatures to enact increasingly strict bans.
“That’s the question of the moment, you know? OK, all of America is watching, step on the gas now,” she says. “More, more, more, more, more.”
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Activists from the organization Estudantes pela Vida celebrate the lifting of the Roe x Wade case
Now 38, Hawkins is bolder and more steadfast than her predecessors. She is a reflection of a new generation of activists working toward their goal: federally banning abortion in the United States from conception.
“It represents the turn to the right in the movement… and how far the movement can go,” says law professor Mary Ziegler of the University of California at Davis in the United States. Ziegler is one of the country’s leading experts on the abortion debate.
“Kristan is very important to understand what’s coming next,” he says.
Hawkins’ plans go against public opinion most US citizens support legal access to abortion and even some Republicans say it goes too far and too fast.
But resolving the Roe v. Wade case was also considered a distant goal. And now, a year later, Hawkins believes he will lead the antiabortion movement to another unlikely victory.
the trajectory
Most antiabortion activists have an origin story, a moment that, in their words, launched them on a prolife mission. Kristan Hawkins’ moment came when she was 15.
She was living in West Virginia when she began volunteering at a highrisk pregnancy center — a type of facility that aims to discourage women from having an abortion and offers life counseling, ultrasound scans, and material assistance such as diapers.
Before he could begin work, Hawkins had to learn what abortion is in order to understand how it works.
During that process, someone at the clinic offered her a VHS tape of Silent Scream, a controversial 1984 antiabortion propaganda film that allegedly showed an ultrasound scan of a fetus suffering the stresses of an abortion at 12 weeks’ gestation .
The film has been denounced as a fraud by abortion activists because it contradicts the findings of leading scientists who claim that the fetus is unable to feel pain before at least 24 weeks of pregnancy.
But Hawkins was appalled and incredulous, too.
In her view, she had just witnessed the greatest human rights atrocity of our time: the routine killing of “babies before birth” as she describes fetuses. Why didn’t anyone try to stop this?
“I remember the first day at the pregnancy center and I walked by and I was like, ‘Oh my God, how is life going on while this is happening?'” she said during an interview in May. “That changed everything.”
After working at the clinic for a summer, Hawkins started an antiabortion community group called Teens for Life. She joined the chapter of the Right to Life organization and the local directory of the Republican Party.
“I was the youngest there, about four decades old. [de diferença]”, She says.
In 2006, after graduating from college and serving briefly on the Republican National Committee and the Department of Health and Human Services, Hawkins was asked to lead the Students for Life organization. At that time the organization with 180 active groups was still in its infancy. She was then 21 years old.
It’s been 17 years since then and Hawkins remains obsessed and willing to email and text her colleagues at every turn.
Her daily schedule entered into her iPhone is a nightmare, with more than two dozen appointments and appointments crammed together at overlapping intervals.
Credit: ROSS MANTLE/BBC
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Hawkins follows the antiabortion movement’s shift to the right.
Sometimes your days are interrupted by calls from a health coach. “They’re trying to get me to drink water,” she said. “I always joke that Estudantes pela vida is based on diet soda.”
She and Jonathan live in a trailer with their four children. This allows the whole family to join her on her frequent trips through SFLA. Jonathan has worked as a teacher and offers homeschooling.
“I’m just going along with it, that’s all I can do,” Jonathan said during a family visit to the Pittsburgh Zoo in the United States in May.
“I think you’re tired of the word ‘abortion,'” Hawkins told him that day. “Sometimes when I speak, I swear I see you squirming.”
When we see her with her supporters and donors, we see that Hawkins is sarcastic and often resorts to humor a sometimes unexpected habit of a woman fighting for total abortion ban. In addition, she often uses offensive words and is restless when speaking.
Hawkins doesn’t have girlfriends, she says, “in the traditional sense.”
“I don’t have any friends who take me to lunch…” she says. “What would I talk about other than ending abortion?”
Hawkins’ mission, which began that day at the pregnancy center, has grown into an overwhelming task — and she knows it all too well. Hawkins tried to teach his team the DBW principle (“don’t be weird,” which is code for “don’t make people nervous”).
“You have to know when to show your passion,” she explains. “If you’re carrying around a paperback with pictures of aborted children and bang it on the dinner table, some people will go crazy over you.”
On a muggy June day in Washington, DC, among groups of teenagers on school field trips and visitors in uniform, six members of the Students for Life group walked to the Capitol to campaign for an abortion ban.
They were all dressed in red and half wore SFLA attire. As an amusing warning, the phrase “the prolife generation VOTA” was stamped on the chest.
One of these individuals wore a pair of earrings from which dangled tiny gold feet the size of the foot of a 12weekold fetus. “It’s an example of their humanity,” she says.
Groups like these are readily found in the state legislatures and universities of the United States.
Under Hawkins’ leadership, SFLA has grown to more than 1,400 active groups in 50 states served by 80 salaried employees. And since 2006, more than 160,000 abortion activists have been trained by the SFLA.
Experts say Hawkins’ particular strength lies in his ability to get people to speak up. SFLA activists are now a fixture at antiabortion demonstrations across the country.
“We started SFLA as a postRoe generation,” she says. “Let’s train this army.”
Following the dismissal of the Roe v. Wade case in 2022, Hawkins’ army mobilized and helped push dozens of antiabortion laws through state legislatures. So far, 13 Republicancontrolled states have criminalized abortion — and at least six other states are pending bans pending court rulings.
About a third of American women of childbearing age now live in states where abortion isn’t available or severely restricted, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a prochoice research group.
Over the past year, stories have surfaced about the apparent consequences of these bans. A 10yearold rape victim was denied an abortion in her home state of Ohio, and 13 women from Texas said they were denied an abortion even though the pregnancy brought complications that could be lifethreatening. Cases like these reinforce support for access to abortion.
“What SFLA and other antiabortion groups are promoting is the worst, most harmful, most criminalizing policy,” said Angela VasquezGiroux, Vice President of NARAL ProEscolha America. “She [Kristan Hawkins] is the embodiment of the extremism of the movement.”
“They make it dangerous to get pregnant in the United States,” says VasquezGiroux.
fragmented movement
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In the year since the Roe v. Wade case was overturned, the antiabortion movement has split.
What path the antiabortion movement will take after the Roe v Wade case is overturned is still a matter of debate.
Hawkins and most other executives continue to share a single philosophy: A fetus is a person who has rights. They also have the same goal: the nationwide ban on abortion.
However, there is disagreement as to what this ban would mean and exactly how to get there.
“The movement is really fragmented,” says Mary Ziegler. “There is no consensus.”
SFLA is advocating what activists call the “early abortion model” through legislation banning abortions from conception, or at least once cardiac activity has been detected, which usually occurs by the sixth week of pregnancy.
In other words, Hawkins’ organization has abandoned the gradualism that guided the early manifestations of the antiabortion movement a strategy still advocated by some SFLA partners.
One such group is called ProLife America Susan B. Anthony (SBA). SBA Chair Marjorie Dannenfelser, a longestablished strong presence in the antiabortion lobby, says she will vote down any presidential candidate who doesn’t enact a statewide ban after 15 weeks, which is supported by 44% of Americans, according to a recent poll.
But for Hawkins, it’s not enough. To earn SFLA support, candidates must commit to supporting a federal ban after six weeks.
Hawkins senses the tension.
“Marjorie is in the system … and I’m the one who comes in and says, ‘[danese]”We do what we know is right,” she says. “We don’t fight.”
Hawkins is also more expansive in her speech and more openly conservative on other abortionrelated issues. She rejects exceptions for rape and incest.
And she is also opposed to various forms of birth control, including oral contraceptives a position that another antiabortion opponent has called “counterproductive”.
“What has changed is that they want to say the confidential part out loud,” said Elisabeth Smith, director of state policy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, a prochoice group. “They want to be extremists in public.”
Hawkins’ actions also worries some Republicans. Politicians were forced to choose between disappointing Hawkins and his allies and losing a much more moderate electorate.
“Politically, Republicans are in a much more defensive position than Democrats because they keep talking about restrictions that the majority of Americans don’t support,” said former Republican Congressman John Feehery.
The projected Republican surge in the 2022 US election appears to coincide with a surge in support for abortion rights that has given Democrats unexpected victories in a number of key elections.
Last year, abortion voters won all six abortionrelated ballots, including in conservative states like Kansas and Kentucky.
“Women are watching the postRoe Republicans and any action that doesn’t include a solidarity strategy to win back suburban women and voters who are changing their votes will do serious harm to the prolife movement and the party as a whole,” he said BBC . Nancy Mace, one of the few Republican lawmakers to publicly call for more flexibility on abortion.
But Hawkins doesn’t see the Republican Party as her problem. She has little patience for politicians she sees as hostile to life, and directs policy threats at Republicans who don’t support bans on early pregnancy.
Republican Senator Merv Riepe of Nebraska voted against the sixweek ban this year. According to Hawkins, “He will be retiring very soon.”
The three Republican senators from South Carolina who opposed the outright ban also face the same threat. Two of them supported a ban after six weeks, but it wasn’t enough for Hawkins.
Each had received a babysized plastic backbone from SFLA earlier this year, with a note telling them to grow a backbone.
“I think that’s the difference between us and other prolife organizations,” says Hawkins. “I really don’t care if this one or that one in Washington DC isn’t happy with me. That doesn’t even get me points in my demographic.”
This aggressive and uncompromising approach has increased its dominance among antiabortion activists, who are now turning to the right after the Roe v. Wade case was dropped.
“The movement as a whole is beginning to call for more extreme prohibitions,” said researcher Zelly Martin of the University of Texas Propaganda Laboratory in the United States. Martin specializes in the American abortion debate.
“You think now that Roe isn’t protecting abortion, why should we back off?” she explains. “And I think Kristan Hawkins has been a big part of that.”
The open question is how far Hawkins will go how far she will push on banning abortion.
“I don’t see a time in American history when Americans want a total abortion ban,” says Mary Ziegler. “There’s no sign of it.”
However, according to Ziegler, Hawkins and others are looking for ways to sidestep public opinion and political opposition. One of those options, perhaps the most viable, would be to ask the Supreme Court, which has a conservative bias, to recognize fetal personality on the basis of the Constitution.
It seems unlikely, but Hawkins is used to that kind of probability.
In Northville, Michigan, in April, Hawkins spoke to a select group of potential donors in a small conference room. She began her talk with a story from her early career:
A prolife advocate gave Hawkins the advice she didn’t ask for: to stop saying “when” Roe v Wade will be quashed. He warned her that she was “too immature, too naive” as she took the repeal for granted.
Hawkins ignored him. She instructed her team to double the bet, reinforcing the message that promised to send the Roe v. Wade case to “the dustbin of history.”
“I always tell our team: Winners visualize winning,” she says.