For years, the people working to ban abortion in America agreed on one thing: the woman should not go to jail. Punish the doctor, they said. Punish whoever hands out the pills. But never the patient. "The woman is a victim" was the line.

That line is starting to crack.

On June 24, 2026 — the fourth anniversary of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade — more than 60 conservative leaders, influencers, and pastors signed a petition asking lawmakers to throw out the "legal immunities" that protect women from being prosecuted for getting an abortion. In plain English: they want to make it possible to arrest and charge the woman herself.

This is a big and dangerous shift. Here's what's happening, why it's happening now, and who it would hurt.

What they're actually asking for

Right now, even in states with total abortion bans, the laws are written so the woman who ends her pregnancy can't be charged with a crime. The petition wants that protection gone. It calls on lawmakers to give "full and equal protection under the law" to embryos "from the moment of fertilization" — the legal idea that a fertilized egg is a full person with all the rights of a born child.

Follow that idea all the way down and you get a simple, chilling result: if an embryo is legally a person, then ending a pregnancy is treated like killing a person. In a state like Texas, that crime can carry the death penalty. An analysis of the new Texas Republican platform found the party moved exactly in this direction this year — quietly dropping the language that used to shield "the mother" from being charged.

This isn't a fringe online argument anymore. At the Texas Republican Party's state convention this month, delegates voted to make repealing those protections one of their top legislative priorities. The vote on the convention floor was loud and lopsided.

Why now? Because the bans aren't working the way they promised

Here's the part the movement doesn't say out loud very often: there are more abortions happening now than when Roe fell, not fewer.

The reason is abortion pills. Doctors in states that protect them — under what are called "shield laws" — mail the pills to people living in states where abortion is banned. According to the Society of Family Planning's #WeCount report, telehealth grew from about 5% of abortions in early 2022 to roughly 29% by the end of 2025. In states with total bans, those mailed pills now account for nearly every abortion that still happens.

So the bans passed. The clinics closed. And the number of abortions went up anyway. That has left the movement frustrated and looking for someone new to punish. Since they can't easily reach the out-of-state doctors, some of them have landed on a new target: the women themselves.

One Texas group is even testing a narrower version of the idea — going after women who hold medical licenses and threatening to take those licenses away if they're caught using abortion pills. Start small, the thinking goes, and see how the politics feel.

They swore they would never do this

The most important thing to understand here is the flip-flop.

Back in 2016, when Donald Trump was asked on the campaign trail whether women should be punished for abortion, he said yes — there had to be "some form of punishment." Within hours, after a wave of backlash, he took it back, insisting "the woman is a victim." That became the official position of the whole anti-abortion world.

In 2022, two of the biggest leaders in the movement — Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life and Marjorie Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America — wrote an entire op-ed in Fox News titled "We're two pro-life women who say 'no' to prosecuting women for abortions." They said it "emphatically." They said it "again."

Both groups still say their position hasn't changed. But notice the new language creeping in. Hawkins now says her answer is "not now" — but, she added, "I'm not saying 'not ever.'" That is not the same as "never." That is a door being left open.

And the leaders pushing to walk through that door are blunt about it. One Texas Right to Life official said he wants it "not to be taboo to ask, 'What is the accountability for these women?'" One activist building the coalition says the number of people who agree is "much larger than people realize." Another said flatly: "This is the hill we need to be willing to die on."

So which is it? For years they told women, "you're a victim, we'd never come after you." Now a growing chunk of the same movement is organizing to do exactly the thing they promised they'd never do. When politicians and activists change a promise this big, the honest move is to say so out loud. Instead, many are simply going quiet and hoping no one notices until after the election.

Who actually gets hurt

Strip away the slogans about "equal protection" and look at who this lands on.

It lands on a scared 19-year-old. It lands on a married mom of three who can't afford a fourth. It lands on women who miscarry — because once you criminalize ending a pregnancy, every pregnancy loss becomes something the police might investigate. Doctors and clinic leaders are already warning that women are afraid to go to the emergency room when something goes wrong, because they're scared of being surveilled or charged. Make the woman a criminal, and that fear gets worse. People will avoid care. Some will get hurt. Some will die.

Even people inside the anti-abortion movement see it. One Texas pregnancy-center director, who counsels women considering abortion, put it simply at the Republican convention: these women have "been abused and hurt and wounded," the father walks away, "and you're going to put them in prison? Really?"

The bottom line

So far, no state has actually passed a law to throw women in jail. Bills to do it have failed, even in Texas. But the ground is moving. A position that every major leader called unthinkable four years ago is now being openly organized around, voted on at a state convention, and floated as a "next step."

The people pushing it are counting on you not paying attention. The least we can do is pay attention — and remember, when a candidate gets asked where they stand on prosecuting women and suddenly has nothing to say, that silence is an answer.

Source

This post was prompted by Caroline Kitchener's June 24, 2026 reporting for The New York Times, "Support Builds on the Right for Prosecuting Women Who Get Abortions."