Once considered the far fringe of antiabortion politics, abortion abolitionists are gaining influence in legislatures, Republican Party politics and the broader antiabortion movement.
June 4, 2026
by Shoshanna Ehrlich
When South Carolina’s abortion abolitionist bill, the Unborn Child Protection Act (S. 1095), was voted out of committee and onto the full Senate floor in late April—“an unprecedented move toward locking up women who have an abortion,” according to Dana Sussman in Slate—it raised a question: How much influence have abortion abolitionists gained within the broader antiabortion movement?
Abortion abolitionists, who seek to criminalize abortion without exceptions and punish women who obtain abortions as murderers, have long been considered the outer fringe of the antiabortion movement. Their roots can be traced to what Colleen Scerpella described in The Prospect as “a new generation of mostly white, male, conservative Baptists, Presbyterians and Christian Reconstructionists”—or what she calls “extreme Christian patriarchy.”
Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2026/06/04/abortion-abolition-punish-women-republican-south-carolina/