Pro-life leader Kristan Hawkins said that the landmark Louisiana abortion case that is before the Supreme Court demonstrates that “the abortion industry doesn’t care enough about helping women to put an emergency plan in place should an abortion go wrong.”
“But this can change, and our thanks to the legislators in Louisiana who have worked to hold the dangerous and disreputable abortion industry to account,” Hawkins said. “We don’t want any more Kermit Gosnells harming women.”
Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, the country’s largest youth pro-life organization, spoke Wednesday alongside the Protect Women, Protect Life Event in front of the Court, following an all-night vigil with pro-life students.
“I stand here today where I’ve stood many times because the life and death issue of abortion was hijacked by seven Justices in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton,” Hawkins told the crowd, continuing:
That kind of judicial activism motivates the Pro-Life Generation, especially the students, Millennials and Generation Z voters I work with daily, as we understand that for the most part, we don’t have a voice and a vote on the human rights issue of our day – abortion.
“Does the Constitution give the abortion industry the right to harm women by failing to arrange for them to survive an abortion?” Hawkins asked. “The answer should be an easy ‘no.’”
In June Medical Services LLC v. Russo, the Court will consider the case of Louisiana’s 2014 “Unsafe Abortion Protection Act,” requiring abortionists to hold active admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles from the abortion clinic in order to provide continuity of care should a woman need emergency treatment as a result of an abortion.
Abortion lobbying groups, such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL, however, claim such safety laws are “medically unnecessary” and an “undue burden” on women and girls seeking access to abortion.
“Allowing the abortion industry to police itself is like trusting the tobacco industry to stop lung cancer,” Hawkins said. “They both sell a deadly product that causes harm and have to be held accountable.”
Hawkins said abortion businesses want to protect their bottom line — profits.
“They want to keep medical standards low and profits high,” she said. “The abortion lobby should not have a ‘get out of regulations free card’ … and ironically, it’s not women fighting regulations designed to protect them, it’s abortionists who don’t want to take the time or spend the money to protect women.”
Following the murder conviction of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, whose “house of horrors” abortion clinic in the Philadelphia area went undetected and uninspected for decades, many states sought legislation to regulate abortion clinics much as any other outpatient surgery clinics are regulated.
“Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry consistently undermine women’s confidence in themselves with a defeatist message that they can’t thrive and prosper in their careers and in their family life,” Hawkins alerted others to the narrative of the abortion industry. “They convince women that they must choose between their future and their child.
“They sell women short — and then they sell them an abortion,” she said. “And as we’ve learned in this case before the Supreme Court, the abortion lobby doesn’t even care enough about women to make sure that they survive that abortion.”
Watch the full Protect Women Protect Life Rally Wednesday morning below: