This January, at the National Pro-Life March, Vice President Vance stood in front of the largest pro-life gathering in the country and did the age-old politician thing.

He told us, essentially: if you want us in Washington to act, go change the culture. Make us feel more pressure from your side than we feel from the other side, and then we’ll do the right thing.

I’ve been in this movement long enough to know exactly what that is. It’s a leader handing the work back to the activists. And honestly? I’m fine with that. Because that’s our job. That’s the whole reason Students for Life exists.

But let’s be clear-eyed about the excuse-making it enables.

Since January, I’ve watched conservative commentators and influencers line up to explain why it’s not President Trump’s fault that his DOJ won’t enforce the Comstock Act—a law that, enforced tomorrow, would shut down the illegal trafficking of Chemical Abortion Pills into states that have voted to protect their babies.

It’s apparently not anyone’s fault that his SBA Administrator still hasn’t moved to debar Planned Parenthood from federal funds—even after FOIA evidence proved what we’ve been shouting since 2021: that the abortion Goliath grabbed more than $80 million in COVID-era Paycheck Protection money it was never qualified for.

Always someone else’s job. Always “the culture isn’t ready.”

So fine. Let’s talk about the culture. Because here’s the thing the excuse-makers don’t want to admit:

The culture is already moving. And it’s moving our way.

This Is Why We Go to the Campuses

Changing the culture isn’t a slogan. It’s a strategy, and it’s a grind.

It means building an army—recruiting, training, and mentoring a generation of leaders. And then it means sending that army directly into the places where culture actually gets formed: high school and college campuses.

That’s where the 1970s talking points still, sadly, rule. That’s where a generation has been fed “my body, my choice” without ever being shown what abortion actually is or what it actually does. So we go there. We educate about the violence. We challenge a tired, antiquated script. And we dare a new generation to re-imagine what truly supporting mothers looks like…instead of offering them a poison pill and calling it freedom.

And it’s working. You can see it in the articles, the books, the podcasts all documenting the same trend: the abortion industry keeps losing ground. And now the polling is catching up to what we’ve felt on the ground for years.

What the Numbers Actually Say

After Dobbs in 2022, we saw a massive shift. For decades, a huge chunk of Americans liked to park themselves in the mushy middle, treating “pro-choice” as the safe, sophisticated, morally-superior high ground. Our polling at SFLA’s Demetree Institute for Pro-Life Advancement in 2021 proves this. Dobbs forced these folks off the fence and sadly took the pro-abortion view. Because what we’ve always said in this movement holds truee: you can’t actually be “pro-choice” on a moral question like this. You either support ending the life of a unique, living human being or you don’t. There’s no neutral ground to stand on. There never was.

But, the Dobbs honeymoon is over, and the data from the past year tells a new story:

• Today, Gallup released its latest post-Dobbs analysis. Since May 2022, the share of Americans identifying as “pro-life” rose to 42%, about a three-point gain. (And remember: “pro-life” has always polled lower than the number of Americans who actually oppose abortion, thanks to decades of bad marketing and a media that loves to elevate the most extreme voices as the face of our movement. More on that in a minute.) On the legality question, 49% now say abortion should be illegal or legal in only a few circumstances…a plurality and a one-point gain over last year.

• Last week, Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs Survey showed the share of Americans calling abortion “morally acceptable” fell from its 2024 high of 54% down to 49%. And here’s a number that should make every pro-lifer sit up: Since 2022, the percentage of adults who find birth control morally acceptable has dropped significantly, the largest decline in the entire survey. Thank you, Gen Z. Thank you, the MAHA movement. Thank you, the growing green and natural-living movement from the Left. The culture is rethinking the whole 1970s contraceptive bargain.

• Last June, before my friend Charlie Kirk was murdered, Gallup found that pro-life identification among young adults had jumped 11 points since 2022, up to 37%—while the share of young people saying abortion should always be legal collapsed by 14 points. The next generation is not buying what they’re being sold.

And let me say this plainly: the assassination of Charlie Kirk took a generation of young people who were already moving right and put them on a superhighway. But the turn had started long before that. The data was already bending toward life.

And the behavior is following the beliefs. A new study circulated this week, and reported by the Washington Examiner, by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that in the 13 states that enacted near-total abortion bans after Dobbs, people are simply having less risky sex. Over-the-counter condom purchases rose 5.4%, and gonorrhea infections, a clean proxy for unprotected sex, fell 21% compared to abortion-protection states. People responded to the loss of abortion-on-demand exactly the way we always said they would: by taking responsibility to avoid an unintended pregnancy in the first place.

Now, I’ll be honest with you about that study, because I’d rather you hear it from me than from a critic. It hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet. And one of its lead authors, economist Caitlin Myers, is no friend of ours—she filed a brief at the Supreme Court defending the abortionists in Dobbs. Which is exactly why this finding matters so much: when even a committed opponent’s own data shows pro-life laws driving safer, more responsible behavior, that’s not spin. That’s a hostile witness telling the truth. Myers is quick to add that safer sex doesn’t erase the demand for abortion—and she’s right, it doesn’t. But fewer unintended pregnancies mean fewer abortions. That’s a win, and we should say so.

Now…the Hard Truth

Here’s the part I won’t sugarcoat.

A new We Count report out from the Society of Family Planning shows abortions actually rose slightly in 2025—to about 1.13 million.

I’m not going to pretend that away. But I’ll tell you exactly how to read it. This is from a pro-abortion research group. They want the number to be high…it’s good for their cause and their marketing. And we still don’t have honest, unbiased, national abortion reporting in this country. States like California don’t even bother reporting their numbers to the CDC.

But strip all that away and the stubborn fact remains: babies are still dying, at roughly the same rates, even as the culture moves in our direction. And chemical Abortion Pills, mailed across state lines in open defiance of the law, are the reason. Which brings us right back to that unenforced federal Comstock Act.

So, the culture shift is real. And it is not, by itself, enough.

So, What Do We Do?

We do more of what’s working. Not less.

We keep changing the culture—student by student, campus by campus. And we keep fighting to pass pro-life laws, because the fight to pass a law is itself one of the most powerful culture-changing tools we have.

This isn’t theory. National Right to Life proved it in the 1990s with the fight over Partial-Birth Abortion. That battle began at the all-time high-water mark for abortion support. It dragged on for a decade. It survived two vetoes from President Clinton. And by the end, public opinion on abortion had measurably moved, because the fight forced America to look at what abortion actually is. The law is a teacher. Every bill is a classroom.

That’s the playbook. Be smart. Be relentless. Do more of the same. And do not give in to despair.

The Real Danger Isn’t Losing. It’s Despair.

I need to name something, because I’ve watched it poison this movement before.

And I need to name who is behind it. Let’s be honest about the actual enemy here. The real enemy is not the abolitionist down the hall or the squishy legislator or even the pro-prosecution “abolitionist".” The real enemy is Satan—the one who has demanded child sacrifice since the days of Molech, and who is still demanding it today. He is the author of this evil. And he is very good at his work.

His favorite tools are the ones I’ve already named: despair, ego, and division. He uses them constantly, and he is using them right now, inside our own movement, to set brother against brother while babies keep dying.

But he has another tool I want you to see clearly, because it’s subtle and it’s seductive: the fallacy of the silver bullet.

Here’s how the deception works. When good, well-meaning people who desperately want to end abortion now look at steady or rising abortion numbers, despair creeps in. And despair makes them susceptible to a lie…the lie that if we would just do this one thing, pass this one bill, take this one drastic step, the whole evil would finally collapse. If only we did X, abortion would end.

There is no silver bullet. I’ve written about this before, and I’ll say it again here: ending abortion is not simple, and anyone promising you it is simple is selling you something. The temptation to believe it is real—I understand it completely, because I want abortion to end as badly as anyone alive. But don’t fall for the deception. A movement chasing a silver bullet is a movement Satan has already distracted from the long, faithful, actual work of winning.

Because here’s where the silver-bullet lie leads when despair is driving:

When people convince themselves the situation is hopeless—that it’s just going to get worse and worse until Jesus comes back—that despair doesn’t make them quit. It makes them susceptible to tolerating violence. It curdles into an end-times fatalism that abandons persuasion altogether and reaches for the sword instead. It champions prosecuting and even executing women and abortionists. Stoning. Deadly force.

You think I’m exaggerating?

Look at the bill Rep. Keith Kidwell introduced in North Carolina in May—right after he lost his primary this spring—that would have authorized deadly force to stop an abortion. Look at the public debate our own Students for Life staff apologist just had with the Central Texas Abolitionist Society, where the abolitionist position openly defended shooting abortion doctors on sight as “gloriously good.” Pressed on whether equal-protection logic means a private citizen could gun down an abortion vendor, the answer given was a flat yes—and yes, that’s a response he was happy to defend.

I’ve seen exactly where this leads. We lived it in the early 1990s. The despair-fueled, prosecution-first, “blow it all up” mindset doesn’t save babies. It encourages violence by the mentally unstable. And violence is the very thing our entire movement exists to oppose.

Worse, it would hand our opponents the gift they’ve been praying for. One act of violence—one—and the media erases every ounce of the painstaking, person-by-person persuasion that has brought a plurality of Americans to our side. Everything we’ve built, gone. We would become, in the public eye, the caricature they always insisted we were.

That is why the current “abolitionist” detour is so destructive. Not because abolition is the wrong goal…ending all abortion has always been the goal…but because the all-or-nothing, scorched-earth version of it saves zero babies while feeding the exact extremism that sets us back decades.

We Have Beaten Great Evil Before

Here’s what I actually believe, all the way down.

We are not a people without hope. American history is the story of a nation that confronted monstrous evil and overcame it. Not overnight. Not perfectly. But through the steady, faithful, generational work of people who refused to quit and refused to lose their souls in the fighting.

The numbers are moving our way. The next generation is turning. The culture is shifting under our feet, right now, in real time.

So, we don’t despair. We don’t reach for the sword. We do the hard, unglamorous, winning work: build the army, change the culture, pass the laws, save the babies we can today while we fight for them all.

That’s how you actually end abortion.

Everything else is just noise—or worse.

I. THE BATTLEFIELD

Twenty years ago, when I first started speaking on college campuses, I didn’t own a bulletproof vest.

Back then, when I was out on campuses alone, the hardest thing I faced was a hostile question. Maybe a nasty email. That was the world I walked into as a young, pro-life activist. I own one now.

Because the world changed. Over two decades, the conversation about abortion didn’t just get louder. It got darker. What used to be whispered behind closed doors is now shouted in the public square, taught in the classroom, and danced about on TikTok.

So, when I walk onto a campus today, I’m not stepping into a debate. I’m stepping onto a battlefield. A battlefield of ideas. A battlefield of truth and lies, with at the center of it, the one question every single generation is forced to answer: What is a human life worth?

Tonight, I came here to tell you that you were born for battle. This is your battlefield too. And you are not who they tell you that you are.

Because you were created on purpose, with a purpose. And the God who created you sent his Son to redeem you. And you are empowered to go out and defeat the evil in our midst.

II. WHO I AM, AND WHY I’M STANDING HERE
Now, before I go any further to convince you to join me on this battlefield to defeat evil. Let me tell you who’s talking to you.

I started Students for Life when I was twenty years old. And when I was privileged to meet people I admired — people whose names you would recognize — and would tell them my mission – to go where culture was formed, on campuses, to change minds and build an army to save babies, many would figuratively pat me on the head and say, “We love your passion, sweetheart. Let me know when you need a real job.”

When I’d say “when Roe v. Wade is reversed” — not if, but when — those same mentors warned me, I sounded naive. I was told defunding Planned Parenthood at the federal level was impossible.

Today, Students for Life serves more than 1,700 groups on high school and college campuses in all 50 states. We’ve trained more than a quarter of a million young people — a few serving in the White House, some winning elections, others running pregnancy centers and saving babies one frightened young mother at a time, and a whole lot of them at home raising and educating the next generation. I was on the steps of the Supreme Court and was the first to publicly announce the overturning of Roe. And last year, we halted 80% of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding for a year in President Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill.

But more importantly, I’m a wife who married the boy she met the first day of high school. I’m a mom of four. Two of my children have cystic fibrosis — a life-threatening disease that does not let me take a single day for granted, a disease that has me on the phone with pharmacies, insurance companies, and sometimes elected officials who I sometimes need help from for hours every month, fighting for my kids the way I fight for everyone else’s.

From home or an airplane, I work fifteen-hour days, regularly. And six years ago, when the world was shut down, my husband and I sold ninety percent of what we owned, bought a fifth-wheel trailer, and chose to be “homeless” for four years — traveling the country together so I could keep doing this work, keep my kids safe, and keep my family in one piece. My children saw dozens of states, national parks, historic battlefields, and they got to watch why their mom leaves: because lives are on the line.

I tell you all of that not to impress you. I tell you so you’ll believe me about the sisterly advice I’ve come to share with you tonight.

III. THE NOISE — AND THE LIES ON BOTH SIDES
Because I have to be honest with you, you are being lied to. Constantly.

You are not who they tell you that you are. Most of what you see online about being a woman is a lie.

On one side you’ve got the trad-wife fantasy — women in linen dresses (by the way, who the heck has time to iron those?) baking a meal from scratch with freshly milled, non-GMO, ancient wheat berries for the homemade bread in a spotless kitchen while children are magically homeschooled and play safely. And look, I love good carb as much as the next woman…as long as Alex approves of the source, of course. But most of us know that is not anyone’s actual daily life…even though I do try my best on the weekends.

And on the other side, in the middle of a real fertility crisis that should frighten anyone who cares about the future of our civilization, the mantras from the second-wave, 1960s/70s feminists continue, as you’re told the smart move is to wait. Wait on marriage. Wait on children. Pour your twenties into making someone else rich so and you take Instagram-worthy vacations. Yet, nobody mentions that every year you wait makes the family you say you might want someday less likely — not more.

Ask yourself why some of the biggest corporations in America took out newspaper ads after Roe fell, promising to “generously” pay for their female employees’ travel to get abortions. Generous? Please. These businessmen know killing a baby is cheaper than supporting a mother. They would rather pay your flight, so you can kill your child than have a real conversation about where the pumped breast milk goes in the office fridge.
That’s not liberation. That’s a company telling you that you don’t need to be “chained” to a husband & baby, just their cubicle & desk.

IV. THE REAL QUESTION: DOES YOUR LIFE HAVE VALUE?
And here’s another hard truth that you likely already know. These lies have weakened us, made us not okay. And while we have achieved everything we were told we should need or want, anxiety and depression are at all-time highs.

When I talk with young women on campus — even the ones screaming pro-abortion slogans older than their parents — I’ve learned the fight usually isn’t really about abortion at all. It comes down to one question they’ve never been asked or know the answer for: Does my life have value? Where does that value come from?

Listen to their actual mantra, and it’s not hard to see where the confusion begins: “This is my body.”

Do you know where those words come from? They’re Christ’s, before being nailed to the cross: “This is my body, given for you.” Given. For you. That’s love — laying yourself down, sacrificing so someone else can live.

Abortion takes those holy words and turns them inside out. It says: “This is my body — and you will die for me.

If we want a culture that abolishes abortion, welcomes children, and sees young women at peace, we first need a culture where each of us, women and men, knows our own worth — not a worth that comes from what you build or perform, but a worth you have received because we’ve been redeemed.

Your life and the life of the child within your womb has value because you both are made in the image of God. You didn’t earn it. It can’t be negotiated. And nobody can take it away.

I have come to learn that knowing WHO made you and what battlefield He made you for helps block out the noise and the lies.

V. GLASS BALLS AND RUBBER BALLS
Now, once you can block the noise and lies. I have to tell you the next skill you’ll need on this battlefield.

While I feel grateful each day to live a life with the opportunity to save thousands of children from brutal, painful abortions and change even more hearts, it comes at a cost. Getting up before the sun comes up and well after it sets…while everyone else sleeps. Time away from four children. A husband who has to take on jobs he never pictured himself doing. Brutal public words spoken and posted, often by fellow Christians, who disagree with strategy, question my motives, or the very fact that I’m a mother working outside the home.

And I’m going to tell you something nobody at a “women’s” conference is supposed to say: it’s not fair.

That’s why, as women on the battlefield, one of the most important skills we must learn is not wielding our weapons…but juggling. And yes — we’re juggling more balls than the men in our lives. Sorry,gentlemen. It’s true.

But here’s the thing I had to learn as young wife, mother, and leader. Some of the balls we juggle are rubber and some of them are glass. The rubber ones, the laundry or meeting request, you can drop those, and they bounce back up. The glass ones, your marriage, your children’s health, if you drop those they’ll shatter and do not come back. And your job, every single day, is to know which is which.

For a competitive type-A like me, that’s a constant, daily examination. And trust me, you have never seen me play Monopoly. Actually, I wish Planned Parenthood would sit down across the board from me. They’d understand real fast that they are going down.

Learn to juggle because if you go through life telling yourself, “it’s not fair,” you are signing yourself up for misery. You can take it up with God when you get to Heaven. Don’t take it up with me — I’m busy.

VI. FIND YOUR BATTLEFIELD
So, this weekend, my prayer for you is simple. That’ll commit to joining me on this battlefield to abolish abortion or find the one God has made you for. Begin to ignore the noise of those who want to tell you worth comes from the freshly milled, homemade bread you bake, the job promotion you got, or someplace other than the God who spoke the universe into existence. And learn how to juggle with both rubber and glass.

Because you are not who they tell you that you are. And you can defeat evil.

VII. A GIRL WHO HEARD A CALL
Six hundred years ago, a teenage girl stepped onto a battlefield she was never supposed to be on.

She was a teenager from a nowhere village in the French countryside in the 1400s. No army. No title. No money. No reason on earth that anyone should have listened to her. Yet, this farm girl walked into the halls of power and told them the truth they didn’t want to hear.

Her name was Joan of Arc.

In Mark Twain’s telling of her story, which he, as an agnostic, said was the favorite of all of his life’s works, a friend tries to scare Joan with how hopeless it all is, how the odds are impossible. The friend asks her — who on earth is going to pull off these impossible things?

She gave a one-word answer. “God.”

Now, the English burned her at the stake when she was nineteen. And the charge against her was really this: that Joan’s faith had become inconvenient to the powerful who believed more in their own right to rule than in the God they claimed to serve.

But at her trial, she said something that I want you to carry out of this room: “That which God has commanded me to do, I will not fail to do for any man alive.”

In modern language, it means this: “What God has called me to do, I will not abandon for the approval, pressure, or fear of any person.”

Not for any person. Not for the online mob or algorithm. Not for your peers who will roll their eyes at you in your dormitory hallways.

Joan found her battlefield, she ignored the lies about her worth, she knew how to juggle (and wield a sword), and was empowered to defeat evil — because she knew she was redeemed, the call coming from above her, not from the crowd around her.

VIII. THE CLOSE — PUT ON THE ARMOR
I know most people think the abortion fight is just about elections, laws, and courts. But it’s so much deeper than that. This is a spiritual war.

Light against Darkness. The truth of ever-loving Creator, a God who loves us so much that he let his Son die for us, against lies from Satan that tell us that selfishness and killing our babies equals freedom.

Ephesians 6 tells us: “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”

For twenty years, that’s what I’ve awoken to do each day at Students for Life— not just teaching you how to argue, but how to put on the armor so you can keep standing to save babies, serve those in crisis, and keep standing even.

Now, we’re an army.

Joan was 14 when she decided to step onto the battlefield. I was 20. You don’t need permission, a title, or a platform. I know my friend Charlie certainly didn’t.

So, ladies, go forth and find your place on this battlefield. Tune out the noise. Learn to embrace the art of juggling. And never forget: because you were created, you have been redeemed. Therefore, you are empowered to defeat evil.

So, I’ll end by repeating Joan’s words. And I’ll be honest — I’m praying my friend Erika can hear them tonight too, because this is for her as much as it is for you.

I mean these words as a dare:

“That which God has commanded me to do, I will not fail to do for any man alive.”

Since January, there’s been a wave of media coverage about so-called “abolitionist” bills in states like Tennessee, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota, bills designed to prosecute mothers and everyone involved in abortion.

The latest Tennessee proposal, introduced a few weeks ago went even further.

Under its framework, a woman who had an abortion could face the death penalty.

Even I was shocked to see religious leaders and influencers endorse the idea. I was even more disturbed reading X comments from people who call themselves pro-life, who seemed almost excited about it.

Even if you support capital punishment, and I do not, being gleeful about the execution of anyone is not a pro-life witness.

But here’s something you may not know…

Every single one of these “abolitionist” bills has failed.

Not one has passed a chamber. Most (might be all…but I would have to double-check that stat) never made it out of committee. In politics, we call that what it is: Dead on Arrival (DOA).

The groups pushing these bills say the reason they fail is that pro-life organizations sabotage them.

That’s factually incorrect, as Students for Life Action has a clear policy to ignore these bills flat out. This means: we don’t send out letters to elected officials, run political programs (mail, text, calls, ads) against them, or threaten lawmakers not to vote for them. I know most other groups do the same.

At the end of the day, these were their bills. Their strategy. Their moment to prove their theory works. And they can’t pass committees, the first stop on a bill’s journey to become a law.

If your plan to end abortion can’t pass in a pro-life state, you don’t have a revolution. You have a slogan.

Recently, I spoke with a representative from one of the organizations pushing these bills.

He belligerently asked me the same question: “What’s your plan to end abortion?”

The implication was obvious: They believe they have THE silver bullet.

Criminalize mothers.
End abortion.

Simple. Clean. Immediate.

Sounds great, right? End all baby killing. That’s what we ALL want.

Except…reality doesn’t work that way.

And never has.

We have laws against murder. Murder still happens.

We have laws against theft. Theft still happens.

Before Roe v. Wade, abortion was criminalized in most states. Abortion still happened.

Laws restrain evil. They don’t magically erase it.

Prescribing jail time is easy compared to changing our culture to reject abortion.

To prove my point:

One of the leading proponents of these prosecution bills recently gave a speech at Liberty University explaining what it would actually take to convict a woman for abortion.

Search warrants.
Investigations.
Forensic evidence.
Grand juries.
Trials.
Appeals.
Years in court.
A jury of peers.

He went through a long list detailing the complexity and thoroughness of our legal system.

Subtext was that it would be really hard to convict a woman.

Try picturing the jury pool in 2026 America.

Half the country still supports abortion. Most Americans oppose prosecuting mothers. (Like, only 8% support it.) And all it takes is for one juror to refuse a conviction.

Then, the entire case collapses.

This isn’t theory. This is basic criminal law.

However, let’s imagine for a moment that one of these bills passes this spring.

Abortion won’t end overnight.

Abortions will tragically continue…just like murder and theft continue.

But, at some point, there will be an investigation, arrest, and prosecution.

And when that day comes, the entire country will be watching.

Not the sadistic abortionist or abortion pill distributor who has been profiting off of lies and violence.

No, the mother. Statistically, she’ll likely already be a mom to another child and poor.

Television cameras will be positioned day and night outside the courthouse. There will be protests, fundraisers, documentaries, and late-night monologues.

The abortion lobby couldn’t script a better propaganda victory.

Because the story won’t be: “The Pro-Life Movement Wants Justice for the Preborn Baby.”

It will be: “The Pro-Life Movement Wants to Jail & Execute Women.”

And decades of work persuading Americans that we love both mother and child will go up in smoke overnight.

Instead of marching into the Promised Land, we’ll be turning our army around and heading back to Egypt.

So, here’s the truth no one wants to say out loud:

Without changing our culture, these prosecution “abolitionist” bills are simply messaging bills.

And one could make a reasonable argument that would be fine as it would shift the Overton Window… IF the same activists pushing these bills had,n’t spent the past few years attacking incremental pro-life laws, those that ban abortion when a child can feel pain or their heartbeat, as “fake victories.”

Take the federal Dismemberment Abortion Ban, which will likely be introduced in Congress soon.

Without ending the filibuster in the Senate, it has no chance of passage. Those who are introducing it know that, but they intend to push the debate & force Americans to understand the brutal reality of second-trimester abortions…and the Democrats who support them (hopefully before the very close 2026 midterm elections).

And, as Students for Life Action has repeatedly made the case to the organizations and elected officials introducing the bill…abortionists can induce cardiac arrest first and then dismember the child after death.

Meaning: The bill will likely not actually stop abortions, even if it somehow passes miraculously passes the Senate.

When we raised concerns, we were told: “Don’t worry — it’s a messaging bill.”

Fine. I get that. The decade-long fight over the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban likely didn’t save thousands of lives…BUT it 100% shifted the conversation and viewpoints on abortion (the polls from the early 90s to early 20s prove it) and that saved lives.

So, let’s be honest in our discussions at least.

These prosecution bills are also messaging bills.

But a dangerous idea being sold to young pro-lifers right now is this: Ending abortion is simple.

Pass one law.
Flip one switch.
Declare victory.

But if ending abortion were that easy, it would already be over.

Ending abortion requires:

• Cultural change

• Legal victories

• Political majorities

• Enforcement structures

• Support for mothers

There is no silver bullet. There is no magic law. There are many battles and cities to take before the entirety of the Promised Land is conquered.

And lying to a new generation of pro-life activists is going to backfire as many will become disillusioned and leave the fight we very much need to be committed to for the rest of their lives.

The real question isn’t: “What will end abortion overnight?” it should be “What work, in the fastest way possible, to make abortion unthinkable AND illegal?”

And that’s a conversation I’m always down to have.

But babies will continue to die while people chase silver bullets.

And the cost of bad strategy is measured in small graves. And I’m not willing to accept that.

Within hours, the reaction exploded. The post surged past two million views, and prominent Protestant voices, including Allie Beth Stuckey and Seth Dillon, quickly pushed back. Friends and critics alike weighed in. Some responses were thoughtful. Others were…less so.

So why did I post it?

The immediate context was a pro-prosecution “abolitionist” bill introduced in Tennessee last week…a bill that would have allowed the state to seek capital punishment for mothers who had abortions. That legislation died in committee today, and I will write more about that next.

But this article isn’t about the morality of prosecuting post-abortive mothers.

This is about something deeper: whether a truly pro-life worldview can support the deliberate execution of a human being, even a guilty one.

And, even if you ultimately disagree with me, one thing became painfully clear as I read through thousands of replies on X last night: too many people spoke about the death penalty with a kind of enthusiasm that should make ALL pro-lifers uncomfortable.

There was an eagerness, even a sense of satisfaction, at the idea of killing those who have committed terrible crimes.

That reaction alone convinced me this conversation is overdue.

What follows are the core reasons I believe the death penalty is inconsistent with a pro-life worldview — not just theologically, but morally and practically. I hope you can use it as a framework when this issue comes up in the future…in your interviews, debates, and conversations with fellow conservatives.

1. Justice Does Not Require Execution

Governments must punish evil — but punishment doesn’t have to mean death. Life imprisonment can protect society and still respect human dignity.

2. Government Authority ≠ Moral Obligation

Romans 13 gives governments authority, not a command, to execute. Authority is not obligation. Governments can punish criminals through imprisonment instead of execution.

3. Imago Dei Applies to Everyone

The image of God applies to victims and to heinous criminals. If human life has supreme value, that includes even those who have done terrible evil.

4. Jesus Reframed Justice Around Mercy

The hardest commandment for me is this: Christ calls us to love even our enemies. The woman caught in adultery deserved death under the law — Jesus spared her and called her to conversion. Jesus saved sinners like St. Paul — a persecutor and accomplice to murder.

As Christians, we believe no one is beyond redemption. Execution permanently, and for all eternity, ends the possibility of repentance. It’s hard to claim we love our enemies while insisting they must die.

5. Modern Society Does Not Need Executions

In biblical times, societies had no prisons. Dangerous criminals could not be securely contained. Execution was often the only way to protect society. When killing is no longer necessary to protect society, the pro-life choice is not to kill.

6. The Church Jesus Founded Opposes It

The Catechism teaches that capital punishment should almost never be used.

Catechism (2267): “The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

St. John Paul II (Evangelium Vitae): Cases requiring execution are “very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”

7. Early Christianity Was Skeptical of Execution

Early Christians often opposed capital punishment. The Church historically leaned toward preserving life whenever possible.

8. Pro-Life Does Not Mean Pro-Crime

Opposing the death penalty does not mean being soft on crime. Murder deserves serious punishment. Violent criminals must be removed from society. Life imprisonment protects society without killing.

Being pro-life doesn’t mean criminals go free — it means we punish without becoming killers ourselves.

9. War vs. Execution

War and capital punishment are morally different.

• War should be avoided and must meet Just War standards.

• Killing in war is done to protect innocent people and defend a nation.

• Execution kills someone who is already contained and no longer a threat.

Killing an enemy on a battlefield is not the same as killing someone who has been locked in a prison cell for decades.

10. Economic Reality

Capital punishment costs more than life imprisonment. Taxpayers often pay far more for executions than for life sentences. If life imprisonment protects society, taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay extra to execute someone.

11. The Human Cost is Real

Supporting the death penalty means requiring someone else to do the killing. Someone must pull the lever, push the syringe, or press the button. That burden falls on prison workers and medical personnel. That responsibility leaves a permanent mark on their conscience. If I support the death penalty, I’m asking someone else to do the killing for me.

Bottomline: A consistent pro-life worldview says if killing isn’t necessary, we shouldn’t do it.

Yesterday, I testified before the West Virginia Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of Students for Life Action in support of Senate Bill 173—our model Anti-Chemical Abortion Pill Trafficking Act.

The bill is straightforward and necessary.

SB 173 does two things:

1. It creates criminal penalties for abortionists and pill traffickers who illegally ship chemical abortion drugs into West Virginia, in violation of the state’s pro-life laws.

2. It establishes civil enforcement, allowing a woman or family member to sue an illegal pill shipper for damages.

The purpose is not novel.
The target is not women.
The focus is the industry, specifically the illegal trafficking of abortion pills into a state that has already chosen, through its laws, to protect unborn life.

And yet, during questioning, I encountered a familiar objection.

One state senator, who I believe sincerely wants to end abortion but leans towards the pro-prosecution of women approach, opposed the civil enforcement provision.

His concern was this:
What if women intentionally get pregnant, order abortion pills illegally, abort their children, and then sue repeatedly for financial gain?

He explained where the fear came from.

After seeing a relative’s baby in the NICU, he learned that many infants there were born addicted to drugs. He recounted a story of a woman who had given birth to seven drug-addicted babies, each with a different father, seemingly indifferent because government assistance followed each birth.

In his mind, SB 173 risked creating a similar incentive structure.

It was a serious concern and one worth answering honestly.

Other senators responded quickly and correctly.

• A $10,000 civil award is not a meaningful incentive once legal costs, time, and evidentiary burdens are considered.

• Attorneys can be sanctioned for filing frivolous lawsuits.

In short: this bill is not a lottery ticket.

Ultimately, the senator supported the bill after an amendment was adopted to allow the state AG to get involved and sue the illegal traffickers for higher sums and recover legal fees.

But the debate revealed something deeper than a technical disagreement.

It revealed a worldview divide that shows up again and again in pro-life policymaking.

At the heart of this objection is a belief, often unspoken, that human behavior will inevitably get worse, not better. It’s fatalism.

That selfishness will increase.
That exploitation will expand.
That laws intended to restrain evil will simply be gamed by those determined to do wrong.

So instead of asking, “Will this law stop real harm?”, the question becomes, “What if someone finds a way to abuse it?”

And if that question governs everything, very little ever gets done.

Let’s clear up our priorities.

The goal of SB 173 is to end the illegal trafficking of chemical abortion pills into West Virginia, deadly pills that are already violating state law and ending lives.

That industry exists right now.
It is operating right now.
And every day we delay, more children die.

Is it possible that some individual might attempt to abuse a civil remedy? Yes.

But my number one goal is to stop the killing.

My goal is not to design a legal system so airtight that no one, anywhere, ever attempts to misuse it. I don’t believe that standard has never existed in law.

This is the same fault line that appears in debates about whether laws must immediately criminalize women who have abortions.

My friend Abby Johnson and I disagree here.

She has shared powerfully that if jail time had been on the table when she had her abortions, she believes she would not have gone through with them.

That testimony matters.

But it is also, by definition, Monday Morning Quarterbacking.

We know that an unplanned pregnancy often produces panic, fear, and tunnel vision. It is easy, years later, to reason clearly about choices that were made in crisis.

And more importantly, this argument again rests on a fatalist assumption:
that sin and selfishness will only escalate unless maximum punishment is applied immediately.

But history tells a different story.

Our nation once legally permitted:

• slavery

• segregation

• the internment of Japanese Americans

• the systematic discrimination of women

• medical experimentation on Black Americans

These evils had to be defeated through law AND culture together, not by insisting on perfect justice overnight, but by advancing truth step-by-step until the culture caught up with the moral reality.

Today, a vast majority of Americans agree that those practices were wrong.

That didn’t happen by accident.

Every pro-life person I know wants abortion to end, immediately and permanently.

But killing bills that would save some lives because they don’t save all lives does not move us closer to that goal.

Neither does advancing laws you know will be:

• overturned after one election

• followed by severe backlash

• used to wipe out pro-life majorities and gains

Especially when no plan exists to defend the lawmakers who took those votes.

Politics is not a theology seminar.
It is closer to a wrestling match.

You can gain momentum, but if you don’t understand timing and leverage, your opponent can use that momentum to flip you, pin you, and end the fight altogether.

Anyway….this article isn’t about settling the moral debate over prosecuting women, now, later, or never.

I’m highlighting that this debate isn’t really about one bill, one amendment, or one committee hearing.

It’s about something more foundational:

What is our worldview?

Do we believe that evil can be restrained and that a wickedness our culture currently accepts can one day be made unthinkable?

Or do we believe things will only spiral downward, that society will continue to promote and advance evil, no matter what we do?

If it’s the latter, then paralysis becomes inevitable.

Bills stall. Laws die. And babies continue to be killed while we fight among ourselves.

The stakes couldn’t be higher as the cost of getting this wrong is measured in lives.

During that call, he said something that surprised me…in a good way.

He described his organization as “incrementalists toward abolition.”

I told him, honestly, that I loved that phrase….and that I was going to steal it.

Because that is exactly what we do every day at Students for Life of America (SFLA) and Students for Life Action (SFLAction).

On college campuses, we don’t expect a pro-abortion student to wake up one day fully pro-life.

If a student moves from “all abortions should be legal” to “maybe abortion should be limited to the first trimester,” we count that as a win. Not total victory…but progress. Minds moved closer to the truth.

The same logic applies in legislatures.

When we pass laws that:

• allow Attorneys General to prosecute illegal Chemical Abortion Pill traffickers, or

• give citizens civil remedies against abortionists shipping pills into pro-life states

…we call that a win.

Not because abortion is over. But because some babies will live who otherwise would not.

That is what incrementalism toward abolition actually means.

Today, in South Carolina, the House is considering a bill based on Students for Life Action’s “Anti-Chemical Abortion Pill Trafficking Act.”

The bill was introduced by Rep. Wes Newton, the same legislator who last session killed our “Life at Conception Act” in committee, likely at the request of House leadership.

Last year, we applied intense grassroots pressure to Newton:

• I personally delivered a plastic spine to his office

• We held a press conference at the Capitol

• Student leaders door-knocked his district relentlessly

We were told we were “too mean.”
That we were “hurting relationships.”
That this wasn’t how pro-lifers should act. Literally, we got a nasty letter from other legislators…apparently putting flyers on cars on a Sunday morning went too far.

This year, that same dude introduced a version of our model legislation.

Do I trust him? No.
Am I thrilled the bill is moving? Absolutely.

Because some babies will be saved.

So, were’s where the problem arises.

So-called “abolitionist” legislators in South Carolina TODAY are actively trying to kill this bill. See this X video from one of them…

They are trying to kill it not because it expands abortion, but because it doesn’t go far enough.

So, a bill that would save lives. A bill that attacks illegal Abortion Pill trafficking. A bill that actually has the votes to pass.

And they want it defeated.

That is not “incrementalism toward abolition.”

That is ideological arson.

And it hands the already weak GOP leadership in SC the perfect excuse to advance nothing.

I’ve seen this strategy before.

Another national pro-life organization (a group you have heard of) who is against the “abolition” approach has spent decades calling for the defeat of bills they didn’t personally write, regardless of whether it saved lives or not.

That’s not moral clarity. That’s ego (on both sides). And it has us cost lives.

This morning, new data (https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2026/02/04/florida-abortions-down-by-half-since-roe-more-women-travel-procedure) showed that abortions in Florida are down by nearly half since Roe fell and the state’s “Heartbeat Abortion Protection Law: went into effect, a law SFLAction proudly helped advance and stood behind Gov. DeSanstis as he signed it.

Are abortions truly down by half? Nope.

Some women travel to other states. Some order illegal pills.

But I believe with my whole heart that some babies are alive today who would not be otherwise.

I’ll take that over moral purity that produces nothing…any day.

I’ve debated abolitionists publicly who claim incremental laws save zero lives. (See 1:04ish on this video:

Some have even argued that God hates such laws and they should be repealed.

There is no data supporting that claim.

There is, however, plenty of evidence that restricting abortion access does reduce abortions. See all of the research that Catholic University of America professor, Dr. Michael New has produced over the last two decades.

Perfect justice delayed until the culture magically converts is not justice. It’s abdication.

I understand the desire for unity.

My friend Ryan at Liberty University recently wrote about incrementalists and abolitionists working together, and I hear that sentiment constantly from grassroots pro-lifers. His piece is here: https://christoverall.com/article/longform/incrementalists-and-abolitionists-together/

But here’s the hard question no one wants to answer:

How do you work together when one side says God hates every bill but their own?

At SFLAction, we made a strategic decision after the Dobbs decision:

We don’t oppose spend time or support money opposing “pro-prosecution”bill in state legisatures when they are being brought up for a vote.

I understand these bills can shift the Overton Window. Here’s what the Overton Window means, btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

If abolitionists want to push bills that have no chance of passage, fine. That’s between them, God, and their supporters who fund it. And, honestly, it makes our “Life at Conception Act” (which bans all abortion and has criminal penalties for abortionists) look “moderate” by comparison.

But trying to kill every other bill is not strategy. It’s sabotage.

And it’s not what the majority of pro-life activists, regardless of whether they believe we must attach criminal penalties for mother or not, want.

Most want progress. The slow, steady march toward the complete end of abortion.

Abolition is the goal.
Saving lives is our daily mission towards that goal.

If your strategy results in fewer laws, fewer protections, and fewer babies saved, then whatever else it is, it isn’t to end abortion.

Incrementalism toward abolition is honest.
Blow-it-all-up abolition is not.

And history is very clear about which approach actually changes the world.

The Trump Administration had “turned federal funding back on” for Planned Parenthood.

Predictably, outrage followed.

Pro-lifers attacked.

The mainstream media, never a friend to our movement, pounced.
And suddenly, in the middle of the annual National Pro-Life March, the story became: “The pro-life base is angry at Trump.”

That framing wasn’t accidental. And it wasn’t harmless.

But before we talk about why that narrative was useful to the Left, we need to talk about what actually happened—because there was far more going on than the headlines suggested.

Here’s the part many people missed in the outrage.

Last March, the Department of Health and Human Services paused certain Title X grant payments while reviewing whether grantees, including Planned Parenthood, were complying with federal nondiscrimination and DEI requirements.

That review did not result in findings sufficient to permanently withhold the funds under current law.

As outlined in reporting by The Daily Signal (https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/01/14/why-hhs-restored-planned-parenthood-funding/), HHS lawyers concluded that continuing to withhold the funds without a legally defensible basis would almost certainly lose in court, setting a precedent that could weaken future efforts to defund abortion providers altogether. And force taxpayers to pay the legal bills of Planned Parenthood and ACLU after a loss in court.

In short:
This was not a policy reversal.
It was a legal constraint.

You can dislike that reality. I do.
But ignoring it doesn’t change it.

Once the funding was restored, the sequence was almost scripted.

1. A partial truth became a viral headline.

2. Pro-lifers reacted…publicly and angrily.

3. The legacy media reframed the moment as “division” inside the movement.

4. That narrative bled into coverage (which was almost non-existent and the worst earned-media numbers we’ve ever recorded of the March in recent years) of the National Pro-Life March.

And here’s the part too few people are willing to say out loud:

The mainstream media wanted this story.

Not because they care about Planned Parenthood funding, but because they want Republicans fractured heading into the midterm elections.

A GOP loss in the House this November will mean:

• Two years of nonstop investigations (like before but even worse, I’m sure)

• A frozen legislative agenda and weakened Presidency

• And collateral damage to the 2028 prospects of J.D. Vance or another Republican winning

However, that doesn’t mean pro-lifers should stay quiet or stop applying pressure.
But it does mean we should be wise about how and when outrage is amplified.

While the cameras were focused on a misleading funding narrative, something far more consequential happened:

Yesterday, Planned Parenthood quietly dropped its lawsuit (https://www.lifenews.com/2026/02/03/planned-parenthood-is-fully-defunded-after-dropping-lawsuit/) challenging the “Big Beautiful Bill” provision that defunded the abortion giant of nearly 80% of its federal funding via Medicaid for one year.

That’s not small or symbolic.
That’s real money.

And it didn’t happen by accident.

The Department of Justice fought, and won, that battle.

Yet, almost no one noticed, because conflict drives clicks and victories don’t. Trust me…put up a X post about a baby saved from abortion and you barely get any traction but put up a X post of a Leftist screaming at me on campus — gold.

Let me be clear: pressure on the Trump Administration is still warranted.

The DOJ’s failure to enforce the federal Comstock Act and stop the illegal trafficking of Chemical Abortion Pills into pro-life states is unacceptable. Full stop.

We should never be satisfied with political leaders while abortion still exists.

But pressure without context becomes counterproductive, and context matters if you actually want to win.

If you want proof that disciplined, relentless pressure works, look at what’s happening right now on Chemical Abortion.

Students for Life Action (SFLAction) is leading the national effort to stop the illegal trafficking of Abortion Pills.

• Our model legislation passed in Texas in 2025

• Bills are now moving forward in Oklahoma, South Carolina, and West Virginia to allow for criminal or civil action against those who ship these life-ending pills into pro-life states

• Texas just saw its first lawsuit filed by a father against a California abortionist for illegally shipping pills into the state (https://www.ksat.com/news/texas/2026/02/03/galveston-man-sues-california-doctor-under-new-texas-law-allowing-lawsuits-over-abortion-pills/#:~:text=A%20Galveston%20County%20man%20has,providers%20for%20up%20to%20%24100%2C000)

And here’s the part the critics never mention:

Last year, GOP leadership in South Carolina and Oklahoma killed our bills.
So we applied pressure—door knocking, church parking lot literature drops, public delivery of plastic spines (asking them to grow a spine to save babies) to offices.

Many pro-lifers condemned us for it. I think we even got an official condemnation from lawmakers in SC. LOL.

This year? Those same leaders who killed our bills in SC and OK, actually introduced the bills themselves.

Spine transplant successful.

Planned Parenthood is not having a good year.

But if you only consume politics through headlines, you’d never know it.

So here’s the lesson:

• Always ask why a story is being written

• Be suspicious when media outlets that hate us suddenly want our outrage and interviews

• Never abandon grassroots pressure…even on “friends” in office

Politicians have one job: get re-elected.
We have a different job: end abortion.

Those two goals overlap, but they are not the same.

So no, we will never be best friends.

And that’s fine.

If you need friends, look outside politics.
If you want to win, stay strategic.