On a chilly March morning, Jason Storms stood on a patch of lawn across from a women's health clinic in Greenville, S.C. It's one of three clinics in that state that perform abortions. Dozens of other anti-abortion rights activists joined him, from Wisconsin, Florida and Mississippi.
Storms had convened the group there for a conference to highlight what he felt to be the failures of the anti-abortion movement since Roe v. Wade was overturned. He said there should be no excuse for abortions still happening in a deep red, Bible Belt state like South Carolina.
"We're thankful for the overturning of Roe, but that certainly did not translate into massive criminalization of abortion across the country," said Storms.
Storms is national director of the militant anti-abortion rights group called Operation Save America (OSA). It's a rebrand of the national Operation Rescue that staged huge blockades of women's health clinics in the '80s and '90s. With its denunciation of women who obtain abortions as "murderers," the movement once represented the fringe of the anti-abortion movement. But since Roe fell, some Republican legislators have shown a new openness to its policy prescriptions. Storms is working to persuade more.
"What it's done is it's lifted the fog off the battlefield," said Storms. "People can now see … the excuses that were being made by a lot of Republicans and professing pro-lifers that 'we can't do anything, our hands are tied, Roe won't let us do anything.' That excuse is gone … and it's made it easier for people to see a lot of what we had previously been saying, that a lot of these guys are fake pro-lifers, they're pro-life frauds."
Storms and aligned activists call themselves "abortion abolitionists," and they are working on multiple fronts. At statehouses, they are lobbying legislators to support hardline anti-abortion bills. At least 14 states saw bills filed during the current or most recent sessions that would establish fertilized eggs as full legal persons, and classify abortion as homicide. At the same time, they are leveraging the cultural zeitgeist around questions of gender — specifically, heightened discussion over the state of manhood in America — to broaden grassroots appeal.
"I think that right now they see this tremendous opportunity for them," said Jessica Valenti, author of Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win. "They see this as a moment in time where the anti-abortion movement could go one way or the other."
The movement has sparked a fight within the right
Since Roe ended, those within this movement have argued that criminal punishment for people who get abortions has only become more necessary. In the immediate aftermath, one in three women was left without access to elective abortions and dozens of clinics closed. Despite that, estimates of abortion in the U.S. increased. Self-described abortion abolitionists believe self-managed abortion, by pill, is to blame. Storms says that even the most restrictive abortion bans in states like Texas, Idaho and Oklahoma are falling short.
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"What all these laws have done is, if the doctor would perform an abortion, the doctor could face felony charges in most of these states," said Storms. "But the mother's granted complete and total legal immunity."
Storms believes the threat of harsh penalties for mothers could close this "loophole," as he calls it. He and aligned activists are focusing their lobbying efforts on GOP lawmakers. They are making progress.
"Whereas Republican legislators used to talk about these bills as 'these are outliers, these are extremists, they have nothing to do with, you know, the Republican Party,' now they're sort of saying, 'Well, it's good to hear everyone out,'" said Valenti. "They're saying that they want them to be a part of the conversation."
But bills to criminally punish women who get abortions are a political minefield for mainstream Republicans. In 2023, one such effort was filed in South Carolina. When a national publication wrote that it would make women who obtain abortions eligible for the death penalty, nearly half of its sponsors withdrew their names. NPR reached out to all 17 members of the state's House Republican Caucus leadership to talk about the more recent bill filed there. Those who responded declined interviews.
There is also the challenge of winning legislators over to a measure that could undermine popular IVF services. In Georgia, this was a sticking point for many Republicans.
The tensions over these questions trace back, in part, to the fact that many in the abortion abolition movement are rooted in a nationalistic, fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity that is declining. Some adherents to this interpretation of the faith use the term "child sacrifice" to refer to abortion, underscoring a belief that abortion is a ritual that empowers demonic forces. They also see no discrepancy between calling themselves "pro-life," and advocating for policies that could, in states like South Carolina, subject women to the death penalty.
"Those are all semantics," said Coleman Boyd, a medical doctor from Mississippi who was with anti-abortion protesters outside the Greenville clinic. "God created us and gave us the laws that are good for mankind, and the law declares 'He who sheds the blood of man, his blood shall be shed'… Every murder deserves the death penalty."
Boyd was among 23 people pardoned by President Trump at the start of his second term for conspiring to violate the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). For Boyd and other activists, abortion looms above nearly all other issues of concern at this moment in the U.S. But it is just one part of a broader political and religious imperative they feel, to bring the U.S. under Old Testament biblical law. Some pastors within this movement also consider same-sex relations, no-fault divorce and adultery to be cause for criminal punishment.
Those who are watching this movement's legislative efforts closely believe there is little chance that any of these bills will become law anytime soon. Typically, they stall in committee and fail to reach a full floor vote. Still, Valenti says she does not discount the effort.
"Abortion rights are very, very much about a small group of extremist legislators imposing their will on the vast majority of Americans who do not want these laws," said Valenti.
While most Americans may balk at the idea of charging women who get abortions with homicide, some legal experts say those norms could shift. Fetal personhood, for example, was a fringe concept until a panic over "crack babies" helped inject it into state criminal codes. That, in turn, laid the groundwork for the codification of punishment of pregnant people.
"Where it really gained a foothold was in criminal law," said Dana Sussman, senior vice president at Pregnancy Justice, a nonprofit that does legal advocacy work on behalf of pregnant people. "And that is where pregnant women have been charged with crimes for engaging in allegedly risky behavior during their pregnancies and being charged with things like child abuse, neglect or endangerment."
Though the abolitionist movement is pushing these bills, many within it say they ultimately believe laws are not necessary to achieve their goals. They assert that the Bible instructs Christians to defy state or federal laws that are "immoral," including ones that protect access to abortion. And so they are also working at a hyper-local level to encourage lower-level officials to flout the law.
The movement encourages local officials to defy laws that protect abortion access
The morning after protesting outside the clinic in Greenville, Storms and almost two dozen other pastors gathered in a storefront church for a brunch. The pastors, all men, sat in chairs facing a speaker at the head of the room. To the side, facing away from the room, two women sat on a couch, disengaged from the purpose of the gathering.
At the podium, Derin Stidd, assistant national director of OSA, shared strategies for building grassroots pressure on state legislators. After he concluded, one pastor in the audience who did not give his name raised his hand to say that the business of state politics feels far away from his day-to-day reality.
"I'm a pastor in a small town," he said. "Is there a different approach to a small town mayor than there is a representative at the state Capitol?"
In response, Storms recommended a book, called The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates. Published more than a decade ago, it has seen increased interest in recent years among local officials, law enforcement agencies and pastors. It argues that "lesser magistrates," such as mayors, sheriffs or council members, have a Christian duty to defy state and federal laws or authorities that they deem to be immoral.
Its author, a militant anti-abortion rights activist and pastor in Wisconsin named Matthew Trewhella, is Storms' father-in-law. In 1993, he co-signed a statement endorsing the use of force to oppose abortion and calling the murder of a women's doctor outside a health clinic "justifiable." In his book, he claims that Americans have three "boxes" with which to resist tyranny: the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box.
Because they believe laws that protect abortion access to be morally illegitimate, activists are even working in states where they have extremely low chances of success. In Missouri, for example, legislators have introduced an abolitionist bill, though a majority of voters enshrined a right to abortion in the constitution. Bradley Pierce, president of a Texas-based nonprofit called the Foundation to Abolish Abortion (FAA), called the Missouri amendment "null and void."
"We are relying on the principle of higher law in the state of Missouri," Pierce wrote in an email. "State and local officials," he wrote, "have the duty to obey the higher law of God."
The FAA, which, like OSA, has been also labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group, helped craft the model legislation for a dozen "Prenatal Equal Protection" bills introduced in statehouses recently.
Valenti said that focusing on local officials can be a highly effective strategy. She said it can mean that the information that women receive about abortion resources is limited to pregnancy crisis centers — often Christian-run establishments that deter women from getting abortions. Or, in states that have established fetal personhood, officials might pass ordinances that could ensnare pregnant people in human trafficking charges.
"If they can institute a chilling effect in their communities, if they can make people think, in their town, that it's illegal to leave the state for an abortion, then they've done their job," said Valenti.
Hardline activists are leveraging discussion about "manhood" to build a base
The impact of these strategies on women's lives could ultimately be profound. But at the Greenville conference gatherings, women are conspicuously absent from leadership roles and strategy sessions. The dynamic is further heightened by messaging woven into OSA's materials about the nature of manhood, including signs that some activists held outside the clinic that said "What is a Man? Provider. Protector. Spiritual leader."
"Every abortion involves a man, right?" said Storms, whose shirt featured the slogan "Restoring Manhood" across its back. "I would argue probably the majority of abortions involve a selfish and irresponsible man, who is failing to properly love the woman in his life."
The movement promotes a traditional, nostalgic and inflexible interpretation of what manhood should be. It leans into a supercharged discussion that is taking place nationally, about a purported crisis of manhood — amplified by tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg, a former Fox News host and a congressman on the House floor. At its most extreme, it has propelled to fame figures like Andrew Tate, a celebrity misogynist who has been charged with rape and human trafficking in Romania. Tate denies the charges and has filed a civil defamation suit in connection with sexual assault allegations against him.
Storms follows Tate on social media.
"He influences millions of, particularly, young men. So I like to stay up to date with what he's doing and the influence he's having on young people," Storms said. "That being said, Andrew Tate … there's a lot of truth in some of the things that he says. One of the big ideas that he has is that men in this culture have been weakened and made effeminate."
Storms says that what he offers is an alternative model of masculinity to what Tate represents, which he calls "Biblical manhood."
"What is Christ-like masculinity? What does Biblical manhood look like, contrasted with what our world is presenting to young men," Storms said. "On one side, sort of a weak, passive. On the other side, sort of the overcompensated gangster rapper. But both are faulty images of masculinity."
Storms said Christian men should be chivalrous, like "knights in shining armor." But he also teaches those who listen to his sermons that Christian men should prepare to be violent.
"There is a time for war. There is even a time to kill. There is a time to fight. There is a time for Christian men to engage in physical conflict," he said in a video sermon during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In speeches, Storms has advocated for Christian men to form militias and train continuously for combat. He said he joined up with men from his church during the pandemic to do this.
"Get an AR-15, get a combat weapon and get some other combat gear," he instructed.
The belief within this movement that men should conform to a certain stereotype is paired with a narrow view about how women and girls should behave. For Caroline Hodges, a 26-year-old who once affiliated with an abortion abolitionist group called the Michigan Holiness Revival, the treatment of women was sometimes jarring. She recalled one episode where a pastor had invited her to attend a convening of activists at his property, and where she had shared some remarks.
"Afterwards, before people had left, he started yelling at me for speaking in the presence of men," she recalled. "I was like, What? It was awful. It was humiliating."
In 2022, Hodges (then Davis) was among 11 anti-abortion activists charged in relation to the FACE Act. She made a deal and testified against others and now refers to the group as a "cult." She said the network of organizations across the nation that included the Michigan Holiness Revival and OSA were led by "a bunch of dudes."
"There's sects all over the United States that have like mini leaders," she said. "There's like, this man looks up to this man, and this man looks up to this man... Then you have this web of people who have people underneath them all over the country that go out to abortion clinics, that meet up at churches."
Hodges, who still is against abortion, said she no longer protests at clinics.
"I have spent a lot of time outside clinics and had a lot of conversations with women seeking abortion, with their partners, with their family," she said. "And when it comes down to it, there's just so much going on in each individual person's life that no one could ever understand unless they were living it themselves fully."
This story was made possible in part by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
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