Initially, we on the Mother Jones video team were skeptical that Kristan Hawkins, an avid anti-abortion leader and president of Students for Life of America, would agree to let us follow her around with a camera. But we were wrong.
“I want [your] audience to be like, ‘Wow, I really don’t like her, but she had some good points,’” is how Hawkins explained it.
So this past spring, we joined forces with reporter Amy Littlefield to follow Hawkins during a campus tour in which she debates college kids in an open forum as part of her effort to build an army of young people to elect hardline politicians and lobby for draconian abortion bans. Many of the strategies Hawkins pioneered have worked: The day Roe v. Wade was overturned, she was on a podium outside the Supreme Court, cheering the new Dobbs era.
But there was one exchange in our travels with Hawkins that stuck out: A young woman approached the mic during her campus stop in Texas. She told Hawkins that she had been raped three times and became pregnant at age 9. Hawkins’ response, which you can watch here, was deeply unsettling—and we haven’t been able to shake it since.
And yet, her views are not even the most extreme out there. On our journey, we spoke with people who identify as “abortion abolitionists” who somehow made Hawkins look—believe it or not—reasonable.
We hope you’ll watch the film, and we’d love to hear whether you thought Hawkins had any “good points” that resonated with you.
—Rachel de Leon and Anna Yeo
