Kristan Hawkins is the dynamic, under-30 mom of two at the helm of Students for Life of America (SFLA), which gathered over 2,000 high-school and college students last weekend for their annual meeting in the Washington, D.C., area, coinciding with the 39th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roev.Wade decision that legalized abortion in America. Hawkins talks about the students, the children, and envisioning a world without abortion in an interview with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.
KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: So how does one “Envision a World without Abortion?” That’s your theme at Students for Life this year?
KRISTAN HAWKINS: I think one of the problems our movement faces is that so many know abortion is wrong — polls prove it — yet they are uncomfortable with the idea of making abortion illegal. They fear the unknown: back-alley abortions, hundreds of thousands of women dying in the streets, or, my favorite line I hear often on campuses, “unwanted children being abandoned and starving on the streets.” For many of us, legal abortion, in all nine months of pregnancy, on demand, is all that we have ever known.
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I try to remind people that our movement is similar to the slavery-abolitionist movement. It’s not a quick fight, but a long battle that will be victorious. You can change the culture; it’s difficult and it requires many things to happen first, but it’s possible.
The first step in achieving any goal is to envision that goal — not imagine, envision. You need to see it in your mind, know what it’s going to look like, and then work backwards in determining the steps you need to take to make it a reality.
I’ve spoken to far too many pro-lifers and Christians who are pro-life but don’t think abortion will ever end. They are right to a certain extent — there will always be abortions — but they don’t always have to be legal. How can you work in a movement when you don’t believe that what you are working for will ever happen?
I think we can see from the victories the pro-life movement had in 2011, despite the obstacles here in Washington, that abolition of abortion in our lifetime can actually happen. So how do you envision a world without abortion? Think about a society in which all life is treated as a precious gift. Where women and families in crisis can turn to community- and government-supported pregnancy-help centers and their church family for support. Where our political leaders respect life, and political parties try to prove who is more pro-life. Where adoption is tagged as a positive and brave option, and birth mothers are celebrated. Where Hollywood and the music industry promote life. Where no woman ever feels forced to choose abortion for the sake of her education, career, or family.
Envision means to make our plans for post-Roe America now: to support and establish the structures, on campuses and in our communities, that we will need to make sure no woman or family gets left behind. Envision a nation in which every woman facing an unplanned, crisis pregnancy knows there is a place she can turn to for help.
LOPEZ: In a new video, you make pretty clear connections between the anti-abortion movement and the civil-rights movement. I realize Alveda King is an outspoken pro-life activist, but do you really have the right to make such claims?
HAWKINS: Yes, we do. Like the civil-rights movement, the pro-life movement is also addressing a human-rights issue — one that has taken over 50 million American lives since 1973. I look to many movements and their leaders for inspiration and comparison, especially the civil-rights movement.
For more than 100 years after the Civil War, bigotry and injustice reigned in America against black Americans. While confronting so much — Supreme Court decisions upholding racism, church apathy, unjust arrests, murders and death threats, and infighting among leaders, the civil-rights movement pressed forward and finally achieved a monumental victory: the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Recriminalizing abortion would simply be "for show" and target only poor women.
"Weekend trips to Canada" would skyrocket (I'm sure Ottawa will appreciate the new tourism), or Aruba or the Bahamas. And that's even accounting for some kind of "Womb Police" in the FBI going around to every private clinic, doing "sting operations" to try to bust doctors for performing them, something that would make the Gestapo look like Barney Fife.
Wealthy and middle class women would still get their safe abortions. Poor women would be left with no choice or yes, those back-alleys that are dismissed so easily. (I guess easy to dismiss when "nobody you know" has to go there.)
But I suppose the pro-lifers will be able to pat themselves on the back for how "moral" our country LOOKS for making it illegal, even though the effect will be limited to one economic class alone. "Keeping up appearances", you know?
"womb police"??? The last two times the Feds knocked down any doors was to burn the Branch Davidians to the ground and hand a terrified child back to the tender mercies of Fidel Castro.
More importantly, you're dodging the issue. If killing the unborn is wrong then the state probably should make it illegal or at least spell out the extenuating circumstances under which it would be permissible (rape, incest, etc...), yes? Then we can deal with the other issues you mention. For example, we could subsidize adoptive services for the poor. Fellow conservatives: please spare me the lecture on how subsidizing adoptive services isn't a Constitutional authority of the Federal gov't. I know.
So, when a wealthy 30 yr old walks into an abortion clinic for the third time, late in a pregnancy, as a convenience means of birth control, you think that ought to be legal?
What's wrong with the absolutely right thing to do?--that is, promoting and encouraging adoption? That way, women will become heroines and they can turn a bad choice, in whatever circumstances, to a good one, and bless 3 lives (at least) in the process!
Abortion is being used as birth control and that is the real moral offense. If someone doesn't want a baby out of wedlock, they shouldn't have sex out of wedlock or take precautions ahead of time--Where the real CHOICE should be made. Choose before sex.
Pro-choice (pro-abortion) people want to do what they want to do, but they don't want to suffer the consequences of their choices. It doesn't work in society very well, and in the instance of abortion, it destroys a forming baby.
Democrats and Republicans alike are somewhat hypocrites on this one. Democrats are happily pro-abortion, but anti-capital-punishment. Republicans are happily pro-life, but pro-capital-punishment. Most people have a contradiction about these issues. But as for me, I will err on the side of innocent life. Choose life first.
Vivienne: The hypocrisy you mention in your last paragraph is all on the Democratic side. There is NOTHING inconsistent with being pro-life on abortion and for capital punishment. Why? An unborn baby is, in the moral sense, completely innocent; he or she can commit no actions worthy of praise or blame. Not so with a born adult criminal, who can commit immoral and illegal acts. Moreover, I daresay capital punishment implicitly carries a pro-life message - speaking hypothetically here to make my point clear, we as a society place such a value on human life we correspondingly consider the act of murder so heinous it merits the ultimate penalty.
The Democratic notion that abortion is a positive good and capital punishment an evil merely reflects that Party's inversion of traditional moral values and that alone, in my book, disqualifies that party from any further control over public and social policy.
And I forgot to ask you, What is wrong with poor women choosing either to protect themselves or not have pre-marital sex? Poor does not mean stupid. You seem to imply that poor women cannot make good choices. Life is a good choice.
Please explain the "flaw" in my premise. That wealthy and even middle class women would be able to obtain any procedure they want...poor women would not. I'll mention we share a border with Canada and airline tickets to other countries are available for sale.
Then explain how "looking" like we're a more moral country is good, despite the fact abortion Prohibition is easily avoided (again by the non-poor) would still continue. And despite the fact that such self-congratulatory self-righteousness would be on the backs of poor women having no choice. That is after all, the effect....banning abortion doesn't actually stop abortions (except for the poor). Does it?
Isn't rescuing poor women and children the true motivation for all of the good deeds of the generous hearted liberal democrats? They generously use other people's money to get whole segments of the population dependent on welfare removing any incentive to work or get married, destroying the families of the poor and increasing the number of out of wedlock births. Then they generously take hard working tax payer's money to fund abortions for those poor women so that, having destroyed the integrity of the family for poor women they can make them murderers of their unborn children to boot.
All of this generous destruction is done with an air of holier than thou sanctimoniousness, so that anyone who opposes these generous liberal destructive democrats should be put to shame for not caring as much about the poor and minorities as they do.
I was poor when I was born. Thank God no generous liberals peddled my death to my mother. I was poor when my oldest son was born, heck we were still poor when our second came along. Thankfully, we know a rat when we smell one.
Don't peddle death to the poor as a mercy. No thanks.
History Buff you are wrong in saying "Recriminalizing abortion would simply be "for show" and target only poor women." No women targeted when abortion was illegal, the doctors who performed the abortion was targeted. The woman was considered a victim of the doctor. [S]he, the abortionist, was the only one who made money from the abortion. Just as today the woman was generally coerced into the abortion.
Actually, it's the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, unless you're talking about something this under-30 mom did 10 years ago. It should be updated with that correction.
Regardless of the positive thinking, I don't think it is possible for the US to go back to total recriminalization. However, chipping away at its prevalence is a wonderful fight! Abortion has become the "easy" answer in the short-term (experience speaking, not assumption), but so very hard in the long term - even for those Christian school kids who know better. I wish her organization well in their fight...
It's easy for a politician to be pro-life. Here's how you do it: You walk up to a microphone and say, "I'm pro-life." Like Mitt Romney. But it's just talk.
Any political party responsible for creating the abortion police can forget about winning any more elections. Republicans know this very well. They just like to exploit gullible pro-lifers.
maksutov66, I disagree. There have been plenty of pro-life politicians who have made a difference. George W. Bush got rid of tax payer funding for exporting abortion that had been put into place under Clinton. Watching Senator Allen West speak on the issue at the pro-life rally makes me wish that he were running for president. He doesn't mince words, and he's not ashamed of stating the truth. If he were commander in chief I don't think that he would be ignored by the congress or ridiculed by the media the way George Bush was when he made his case in defense of life.
You are a cynic and you don't know what you are talking about! How about nominating judges for the Supreme Court? How about restoring the Mexico City policy which bans federal funds from being used overseas to promote abortion? We pro lifers are not gullible - it is you pro aborts who are the fools. The life you aborted may have been the one who would have supported you in your cranky old age. Being pro life means putting up with your snarky comments.
This woman is utterly disgusting. She tries to hijack the civil rights movement to the highly theoretical issue of abortion, and she wants to ban the procedure completely, which would among other things result in criminal investigations in every miscarriage that a woman suffers.
She's really just enmeshed in the movement and the feeling of importance that comes with it.
Dear Guitarist: Please take your ideological instrument and strum it elsewhere, such as Dialykooks, er kos. This is a pro-life and proud site. And by the way, the Sixties and the mentality that you are a clear exemplar of are over. A return to normalcy and common sense after decades of cultural deterioration trumpeted as individual rights and freedom is beginning. See you in November!
OKB, are you a moderator or admin on this site? If not, then perhaps you might think about refraining from instructing others to leave the website. If your pro-life stance can't stand up to debate, maybe it's not as strong as you think it is.
I am pretty certain that if a referendum could be held on a proposal that make abortion legal in the 1st trimester but illegal in the 2nd and especially 3rd (with an exception for clear and present danger to the mother's life) it would pass by a great majority. However, such a law would not serve the interests of grand-standers on both sides, and therefore has no chance of ever passing Congress.
Right now, we have the topsy-turvy situation that euthanasia-happy Holland and Belgium actually have more restrictive abortion laws than the USA!!!
From a practical perspective, the least of all evils --- given the current set of political constraints --- may be to hand the matter over to the individual states.
How tiresome and frustrating it is to hear once again the canard that Planned Parenthood is an "abortion Goliath" - when a few minutes' research will show that the vast majority of the services that PP provides are NOT abortions, or even abortion-related. PP offers women's and children's health services, including education on and treatment of STDs (a topic they address with a very serious focus on prevention), routine gynecological services for women who can't afford private physicians, pre-natal care (no, they definitely do NOT advise every pregnant woman to abort), adoption counseling (surprised? Guess you don't know as much about PP as you thought), and of course access to contraception - something Mrs Hawkins should support, since it reduces abortions.
The interview does not, in fact, address the subject of contraception. Does the SFLA oppose the use of contraception? It's an important question to ask of any organization that advocates the criminalization of abortion.
Too bad the NR chose not to send a real journalist to conduct this interview. Ms Lopez just handed Mrs Hawkins sycophantic scripted cues for her promotional spiel - and never asked a single question that would result in a consideration of the other side of the issue. Really sad how journalism has sunk to this level - on both sides of the political fence. Conservatives criticize the media of being left-leaning and of lobbing soft-ball questions to liberal subjects - but just look at the poor excuse for journalism that we see in this article.
from LifeNews.com:
"That caused David Schmidt of Live Action to respond that Martin is confirming what pro-life people have said all along.
“Some (usually abortion advocates) question why pro-life advocates spend so much of their focus on Planned Parenthood which they describe as just another health care provider. The fact is that Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion chain in the United States as confirmed by their own annual report showing over 325,000 termination procedures,” he said. “So there you have. Planned Parenthood admitting that they are the most visible proponent against the right to life and for the choice to terminate one’s child. Who made Planned Parenthood associated so strongly with abortion and against the right to life? They did and defenders should see that even they admit it."
