Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion advocates and leaders have insisted they do not want to prosecute people who get abortions, pointing to states that have restrictions in place but also have carve outs specifically exempting patients from prosecution.
This year, however, a growing number of state lawmakers, who are part of the so-called “abortion abolitionist” movement, are filing bills to classify abortion as homicide and allow law enforcement to go after abortion patients. Those bills are picking up more mainstream support.
Though legislation that would punish women for having abortions has not passed any state legislatures, after the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, these bills aren’t just supported by the far fringes of the anti-abortion movement — which prior to 2022, they decidedly were.
“We have seen substantial gains for our legislation over the last few years,” said Bradley Pierce, president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, which writes model legislation for lawmakers to make abortion illegal with no exceptions. “Our efforts and the work of abolitionists across the country to reach both the culture and the public square are bearing fruit. We saw over a dozen bills and counting filed this year.”
At least 13 states have filed legislation to abolish abortion this legislative cycle, according to Pierce’s group, including in states where abortion is still legal or even protected like Kansas and Maine. At least 15 bills have been filed so far in the first months of 2025, while only seven were introduced in 2024 and 13 were introduced in 2023, per an analysis of the group’s data.
Pierce told NOTUS that a bill introduced in the Georgia state House received 21 co-sponsors, “nearly one quarter of Republicans” in that body. In North Dakota, an abolitionist bill made it to a vote on the state House floor. While it ultimately failed in a 77-16 vote, that was more support “than any previous abolition bill,” Pierce said.
There have been at least four hearings held in state legislatures in Oklahoma, North Dakota, Georgia and Missouri on the legislation as well, which is “the most we’ve had in a single legislative session,” according to a spokesperson for the Foundation to Abolish Abortion.
A Texas bill, which is currently in committee, received support from a large coalition of conservatives in the state, including the chair and vice chair of the Republican Party of Texas. The coalition said in a letter that the legislation closes “loopholes” in state law by repealing portions that protect people who obtain abortions from prosecution.
“Today in Texas, a woman could appear on television, admit to killing her own child in utero, and hold the evidence of that action up for all to see, yet she has not broken any law. THAT is an injustice that the Texas House could and should address,” Texas state Rep. Brent Money, who introduced the bill, said in a statement.
Medication abortion, which is considered a way to circumvent restrictions, as pills can be accessed online and mailed discreetly, accounts for the majority of abortions in the U.S. For some anti-abortion activists, these bills are the best tool to address this.
Abby Johnson, a prominent anti-abortion activist who signed on to the Texas letter and also supported the bill that failed in North Dakota, told NOTUS that Texas’ current near-total abortion ban, known as the Human Life Protection Act, isn’t “actually ending abortion.”
“We thought, maybe that will be enough, but it only goes after the providers, and although we’ve seen a little bit of movement in that, it just hasn’t been enough,” Johnson added. “If we actually want to end [abortion], if we’re really serious about this, we have to attack the consumerism of abortion, and that’s going after people who are obtaining the pills; people who are taking the pills.”
Major national anti-abortion groups acknowledge that while the push to criminalize patients is gaining more support, those in favor of it are only a small segment of the larger anti-abortion movement.
Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, told NOTUS that the “pro-life movement is still united in opposing penalties for women who get an abortion.” (The NRLC and other major organizations have sent letters to state lawmakers and GOP officials in the post-Roe era urging them to oppose measures that go after patients).
“There are certainly pro-life people who think it should happen, but they are very much a minority,” Tobias said. She added that while there may be “some increase” in support for abolitionist legislation, “I just don’t see it as lasting. It’s just not going to hang around because it’s not a viable position.”
A 2022 Pew Research Center poll, released after the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe leaked, found that 47% of U.S. adults say women who obtain an abortion illegally should be penalized in some way for doing so. (Only 14% said women should face jail time, while 16% said they should have to do community service and 17% said they weren’t sure what kind of penalty they should face.) In comparison, support for penalizing health providers was much higher, with 60% of adults supporting penalties for doctors who provide abortions illegally.
“[Susan B. Anthony] Pro-Life America does not support legislation to criminalize women and qualify them for the death penalty,” Kelsey Pritchard, the organization’s political affairs communications director, said in a statement.
In May 2022 — shortly before the Dobbs decision came down — Johnson came out in support of prosecuting women with a long Facebook post, saying that “[i]f we do not have the same due process in the law for those who pay to take the life of their children, then we as a movement are liars.”
She told NOTUS that this year she has seen support for prosecuting abortion patients grow, both privately and publicly, but declined to name specific leaders who back it behind closed doors.
“I think the fear for many pro-life leaders and, kind of, the hesitancy of coming out full force about this is because of donors. They worry, ‘Am I going to lose donors because of this?,’” Johnson said.
Johnson pointed to Alex Clark, a conservative media personality and podcast host with Turning Point USA with a large online audience, who posted on X in February that a “woman should go to jail” if “abortion is outlawed and legally considered murder in your state.”
Clark told NOTUS in an interview that it was not hard for her to state her opinion on the matter.
“I’m shocked that anyone would be shocked by this,” Clark said. “How in the world could you be a staunch pro-lifer or advocate or activist and not see the break in consistency there, to not say that if abortion is made illegal, we wouldn’t be holding the people opting to get an abortion and the providers criminally responsible. I don’t understand that because then, what is the point of anything that we’ve been fighting for?”
When asked if people were worried about the position being politically popular, Clark said, “I’m not trying to do what’s expedient politically or popular, I’m trying to do what is morally and ethically right and sound and consistent.”
Johnson and Clark did not go as far as to call themselves “abortion abolitionists” — the latter said she considers herself “someone fighting for equal rights protections” — but even if they did, they’d face a potentially unwelcoming crowd among those that consider themselves “abolitionists,” which is largely led by a group of Evangelicals who are have expressed skepticism of Catholics.
“While we’re grateful that they’re supporting the abolition bill, know that they are not people that should be platformed or put forward as leaders in the abolitionist movement because the abolitionist movement is explicitly Christian,” said Rachel Burkey, a representative with the group Abolitionists Rising.
Abolitionists Rising has model legislation for a federal bill declaring that “[a]ny human being who commits the act of abortion shall be prosecuted for murder” and that “[n]othing in this Act shall be construed to grant legal immunity or impunity to a mother who willfully chooses to murder her child by abortion.”
Burkey said that the group’s goal is to “dissolve our organization” once abortion is completely “abolished.”
These activists also oppose many abortion restrictions currently in law across the country because they exempt abortion patients from prosecution.
“Refusing to act and standing by while babies die unless you can achieve absolute victory isn’t righteousness — it’s cowardice disguised as ‘consistency,’” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life Action, posted on X.
As the divide between the mainstream anti-abortion movement and “abolitionists” over patient prosecution continues, Hawkins has signaled that it’s possible the mainstream anti-abortion movement could change their mind — eventually.
There are “three schools of thought on prosecution of women: There’s those who say prosecute women and abortionists now, right now. There’s those who say prosecute abortionists now and, perhaps, women later after culture and laws are changed. And there’s the third class of folks that say never prosecute women, but you can prosecute abortionists now,” Hawkins said on her podcast in February.
“The vast majority of us, including myself, in the pro-life movement are in that middle category because that makes the most logical sense. It allows us to move the ball forward in good faith to save as many lives as we can right now, while working to change culture,” she continued.
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.