In the News

Young pro-lifers protest abortion at the Supreme Court on the 40th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade

Posted on by Kristan Hawkins

Originally published on RedAlertPolitics.com
Students for Life, a pro-life organization for college students, rallied on the steps of the Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. on Tuesday in honor of the 40th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for legalized abortion.

Some protesters carried “We are the pro-life generation” signs, while others lined the Supreme Court steps wearing tape across their mouths with the word “Life” scrawled across it.

Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins said, “This generation is actually more pro-life than our parent’s generation.”

“Historically people assume that the younger people are more liberal…but that is not the case,” she added.

A Gallup Poll that came out in May, claims that only 46 percent of young adults between the ages of 18 and 35 are pro-choice. A newer poll from the Wall Street Journal found that seven in 10 Americans do not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned, but the WSJ poll did not break down the findings by age.

Following Monday’s Students for Life press conference, which attracted just 30 pro-life activists, members spread 3,300 roses across the Supreme Court steps symbolizing the 3,300 abortions that happen everyday.

“Today’s press conference was a peaceful prayer vigil,” Hawkins said. “It was a time for us to reflect about pro-life over the past forty years and it sets the stage of where we ‘re going in 2013 and in the years beyond.”

The Hilaman family traveled from Virginia for the rally, because according to mom Jennifer Hilaman, “it’s horrific that on American soil…we murder our own children.”

Jennifer and Rick Hilaman also decided to bring their teenage children Ricky and Makayla to join the fight against abortion.

“Well I don’t think it’s right that people kill babies,” 15-year-old Ricky said. Looking towards his parents, he added. “They brought me up to always let a baby live.”

Makayla, who is 18, said she’s pro-life because “it’s really immoral, and it’s against my religious beliefs.”

Despite the fact that President Barack Obama, who is pro-choice, was reelected to a second term and will likely have the opportunity to put several additional pro-choice Associate Justices on the Supreme Court soon, Jennifer Hilaman claims Roe v. Wade will be overturned in 2013.

“I guarantee you that,” she promised.

While others at the rally lacked Hilaman’s confidence, they were hopeful there was a way to push through pro-life legislation on a statewide level.

“The Supreme Court is a pretty difficult way,” Hawkins admitted. “I know that’s how it came into being, but it might have to go back to the states.”

Students for Life will protest at the Supreme Court once again on Friday for the 40th March for Life, joining thousands of pro-life advocates in the world’s largest human rights demonstration.

By /// January 22, 2013

The Abortion President

Posted on by Kristan Hawkins

The article originally appeared in The American Spectator:

By on 1.22.13 @ 2:16PM

Forty years ago today, the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in the United States. Since January 22, 1973:

  • More than 54 million babies have been aborted in the U.S. alone.
  • The rate of abortions in the U.S. has become one of the highest in developed countries, averaging 1.1 million abortions a year.
  • Approximately one in three women has had an abortion by age 45.

Yet the number of abortions in America has declined slightly in recent years, and Kristan Hawkins, executive director of Students for Life, said at a recent Heritage Foundation event, “The tide is turning.”

Reports indicate that today’s young people are more pro-life than ever. Terming them “the pro-life generation,” Hawkins declared, “The energy of the pro-life movement is in its youth.”

“Technology is on our side,” Hawkins said. “We’ve seen the ultrasounds of our siblings, Googled ‘abortion’ and seen the bloody images, and sat with a friend as she cried about her abortion.”

Abortion numbers are down in the U.S., but government funding for abortions is up. According to Planned Parenthood’s new annual report, the nation’s largest abortion provider performed a record number of abortions last year, and received 45 percent of its revenue from taxpayer-funded government sources.

Barack Obama has earned the title of “the abortion president” for his unprecedented measures supporting the destruction of innocent human life. He has contentiously appointed such notable pro-abortion advocates as Rahm Emmanuel, Tom Daschle, Hillary Clinton, Elena Kagan, Kathleen Sebelius, and countless others to posts of power. He signed a bill that overturned the 13-year long ban on funding abortions with tax dollars and cut funding to abstinence education programs. He’s also been busy peddling the United States’ anti-life message around the globe.

Obama’s abortion record is shocking, but it should come as no surprise from the leader who, (from Life News):

  • Voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act four times.
  • Repealed the pro-life “Mexico City Policy,” making groups that perform and promote abortion eligible for U.S. foreign aid funds.
  • Increased Planned Parenthood’s government funding from 30% to nearly 50%, sending more than $487 million in taxpayer funding to the country’s number one provider of abortions.
  • Refused to sign an emergency budget, putting funding for the military at risk, until Planned Parenthood funding was included in the budget.
  • Pushed through Obamacare, mandating that all Americans fund abortion and contraception, with no exceptions for religious institutions or religious individuals who are vehemently against abortion and contraception.

Not so fast, BO. A poll from earlier this year found that the majority of Americans are pro-life, and the opinion polls that report otherwise don’t mean much when one learns that the phrasing of the poll question sets the results up for inaccuracy.

Legislators are behind life, too. From ABC News:

Americans United for Life released its annual “Life List” this week, celebrating states with the most restrictions on abortion as being the most protective of human life. The nonprofit named Louisiana as America’s “most protected” state and Washington as its “least protected.”

A law passed last summer in Louisiana now requires women to wait 24 hours between the time they undergo mandatory ultrasounds and the time they can have abortion procedures. This law also requires that the fetal heartbeat be made audible unless the woman specifically requests otherwise. Unless the woman is a victim of rape, and has reported it, she must listen to a description of the ultrasound.

Just three weeks ago, Texas defunded all Planned Parenthood clinics in the state – many of which do not perform abortions — for being affiliated with an organization that advocates them.

Another encouraging sign for the pro-life movement is Planned Parenthood’s frantic retooling of its public image. “They’re moving away from ‘abortion,’” Hawkins said. “Always say pro-abortion. We are ‘anti-abortion.’”

Anti-abortion demonstrators will descend on the nation’s capital this Friday in the hundreds of thousands for what is predicted to be the biggest March for Life ever. The crowd is expected to rival Obama’s Inauguration Day gathering, sending a large, loud and clear message to the abortion president about overturning Roe v. Wade.

Abolish Abortion

Posted on by Kristan Hawkins

This article originally appeared on Right Wing News:

Today, January 22, 2013, is the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decisions Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, which made abortion legal essentially throughout all 9 months of pregnancy. As we mourn the 55 million pre-born babies we have lost since those decisions, it is important for us, now more than ever, to show the world that this generation of young people is pro-life.

The pro-life movement has made great strides over the past few decades, but our work is not even close to being over. Here is what Students for Life of America is looking forward to accomplishing this year as we work towards our goal of abolishing abortion in this lifetime.

1. Telling the stories of courageous young people with the release of our first book entitled, “Courageous: Students Abolishing Abortion in this Lifetime.” “Courageous” features the stories of 12 pro-life students whose lives have been affect by unplanned pregnancies and abortion. In this book, you will see the momentum the pro-life movement has on high school and college campuses across America through the eyes of students who have answered the call to abolish abortion and done extraordinary things. Our goal is to get it in the hands of every pro-lifer, young and old, to be inspired and to keep marching forward as we commemorate 40 years of legal abortion in our land.

2. Making the pro-life generation’s presence known at the 40th March for Life. The young people of this generation are the survivors of Roe, and we are encouraging them to seek out media, both online and traditional, to share the youth perspective on the anniversary and what the March means to them. Over 200 student groups that we are directly in contact with are planning to head to DC for the March. On “March Day” this Friday, students will meet us before the rally at 11:30am on the southwest corner of 7th St. and Madison Dr. to hand out 10,000 signs that say, “I am the Pro-Life Generation” and “Courageously Abolishing Abortion.” Our students will also be bearing one of the largest banners in the entire March that declares, “We are the Pro-Life Generation.”

3. Hosting the nation’s largest abortion abolitionist conference on Saturday, January 26th. The Students for Life of America National Conference has been selling out for the past 3 years with over 2,000 of the country’s leading pro-life activist students gathering for a day of speakers, training, fellowship, and fun. This year’s conference theme is “Be Courageous,” a title we thought fitting for pro-life young people heading back to their campuses and into the next 4 years of the Obama administration. Students will learn about answering the “hard” questions, adoption, Planned Parenthood, birth control, legal rights for pro-life students, facing adversity with Star Parker, and much more. The morning and late afternoon sessions may be watched live online at http://www.sflalive.org.

4. Taking the abortion Goliath, Planned Parenthood, head on by exposing their lies in high schools, colleges, and towns across America. Our research has shown that almost 60% of young people don’t even know that Planned Parenthood does abortions. When these people find out the truth about Planned Parenthood’s bloody record, their opinion is negatively affected. We need to do a better job educating the public about PP’s dirty and corrupt practices. I am excited about this new project, stay tuned – more details to come soon!

5. Expanding the reach of Students for Life to start pro-life movements on new high school and college campuses. This year, our goal is to hire and place new Coordinators in 8 key states, as well as continue to give free resources and support for the more than 700 active pro-life student groups we serve across the country. We seek to rewrite the stories of pregnant and parenting students by working with pro-life student groups to provide the resources necessary to make abortion an unthinkable option. We’re always here to help – email us anytime at info@studentsforlife.org.

The time is now for this generation to mobilize, train, and stand courageously for life. Working together, we can and we WILL abolish abortion in this lifetime.

- Kristan Hawkins is the President of Students for Life of America, the nation’s largest pro-life youth organization with over 700 groups nationwide. She is author of the new book “Courageous: Students Abolishing Abortion in this Lifetime.”

SFLA Planned Parenthood Event Protest at VCU – Sept. 14, 2011

Posted on by janderson

On September 14th, Virginia Coalition to Protect Women’s Health held an event at The Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA to speak out against the VA Board of Health’s proposed regulations for Virginia’s abortion clinics. This event fell before the September 15th vote to accept or reject regulations that would hold facilities that perform abortions in the state to specific safety standards.

In order to counter their event with the message of life, Students for Life of America organized a pro-life flash mob. We garnered the support of about 50 pro-lifers from various statewide organizations, including Virginia Coalition for Life and Life, Inc. – as well as on-campus support from VCU Students for Life and VCU CCM.

See what happened when we came face-to-face with pro-abortionists, Planned Parenthood representatives, and students on both sides of the issue!

New Article on SFLA: The rise of future anti-abortion-rights OB-GYNs

Posted on by Kristan Hawkins

By: Sofia Resnick
Originally posted on The American Independent

In April, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill that makes it illegal for state colleges to fund medical residency programs that offer abortion training with state or federal money, including money paid by students as part of tuition or fees.

But what began as a rare seed in a nationwide garden of abortion-defunding measures has blossomed into a national movement to reduce the number of medical professionals who are trained to provide abortions. Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a measure that would ban health centers from using federal funds for comprehensive medical training that includes instruction of abortion procedures. Continue reading →

Obama’s Grave Assault on Medical Conscience Rights

Posted on by Kristan Hawkins

By: Kristan Hawkins

During the past two years, Americans have seen the expansion of the federal government into sectors of their economy and personal life as never before.  And earlier this year, the Obama administration quietly moved into a new area of American life, one of its most intimate, the patient-doctor relationship.

Like the Obama takeovers of the automobile industry, the banking industry and then the health care industry, the new conscience-rights assault is the administration’s latest attempt to fundamentally change our nation as we know it.

In February, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the rescission of most of the Bush administration’s 2008 conscience protections, removing the rights of doctors, pharmacists and other medical professionals to object to prescribing or dispensing known abortifacient drugs such as Plan B and ella. Continue reading →

Pro-Life Med Students Face Discrimination

Posted on by Kristan Hawkins

by Dr. John Bruchalski 

We recently completed a two-week national bioethics tour through 23 medical schools and universities with Medical Students for Life of America, during which we hoped to let some of America’s top medical students know that they are not alone in facing discrimination based on their pro-life beliefs. Nearly 1,000 medical students from both sides of this debate joined us to engage this question, from Harvard Medical School to Mayo, from the University of Pittsburgh to the University of Virginia. Some of the stories we heard may startle you.

Take “Christine,” who said that none of her professors talk about relationships in medicine, only the ideology of just performing the procedure. We also learned of “Ryan,” who was punished by his own mentor. He was the only one among his peers to suggest adoption for a woman in a troubled pregnancy; everyone else recommended abortion as the first and only option. A memo by his professor later surfaced in which he declared that “Ryan” would be a future abortion-clinic bomber. This memo was never sent to Ryan but went straight into his student file, the hub of school performance evaluation that becomes critical when students apply to residency programs. He was blacklisted for believing women deserve options.

Then there’s “Mary,” who said she felt intellectually assaulted during her OB/GYN rotation in her school’s training hospital. She recalls being inundated with professor instructions to promote abortions continually for pregnant patients, never mind her personal beliefs about it. Continue reading →

Wrong to Use Prenatal Genetic Testing to Push for Abortion

Posted on by Kristan Hawkins

by Kristan Hawkins

In a January Nature Magazine article the head of Stanford’s Center for Law and Biosciences, Hank Greeley, said that within five years, genetic testing kits will be available over the counter that will predict not only whether a preborn baby has Down Syndrome, Cystic Fibrosis, or Tay Sachs disease, but also the baby’s sex and eye color.

This is an alarming statement –one that, at first, many may not give a second thought, even some pro-lifers.

In the same article, Greeley estimates that the number of genetic tests performed on preborn babies will jump from the current 100,000 to over 3 million and that abortions will be viewed as a way to save money from being spent on “high cost children.” Because who really wants “to bring a child into the world who will suffer and cause their family undue burden and emotional and financial hardship?”

Before I had my son Gunner, I knew that prenatal diagnosis was being used to eliminate children with Down Syndrome, but I didn’t connect prenatal testing as the determining factor for abortions. Continue reading →