Anti-abortion group is spreading lies to stop college kids from getting health care

The head of Students for Life of America, Kristan Hawkins, is very willing to spread utter falsehoods about medication abortion in order to push her dangerous anti-choice agenda.

Her latest round of lies occurred because California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a bill that requires medication abortion, a nonsurgical procedure, at all public universities in the state. Anti-abortion radicals like Hawkins are furious, so they’ve resorted to making up claims about the safety of medication abortion and are now offering legal assistance to health care workers offended by the procedure.

In fact, SFLA is actively seeking out public university health care employees who oppose the law. The day the law was passed, the organization posted a tweet saying, “if you are a student or employee who is worried how this affects your #consciencerights message us and we will assist you.”

SFLA likely has to try to solicit these sorts of claims because these so-called conscience rights claims are vanishingly rare. Last week, the federal government had to admit in court that, where it had once claimed there were 343 religious rights complaints in 2018, there were actually only about 20 — for the entire country.

The organization is also outright lying about the dangers of medication abortion. Medication abortion is a procedure where a patient takes one medication when they visit the health care facility and a second medication at home. It’s incredibly safe, with serious complications occurring in fewer than 0.4% of patients, and it’s incredibly successful, with an overall success rate of 95-99%.

Ignoring all evidence to the contrary, SFLA calls the procedure a “dangerous,” and Hawkins says it will “put students’ lives at risk.” She also said, “California just ensured women will die in their dormitory bathrooms, bleeding out alone from the abortion pill.” None of that is supported by evidence.

Of course, what really puts students’ lives at risk is a lack of access to safe, legal health care, including abortions. And with approximately 400,000 female students on California’s public university campuses, that access is a necessity.