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Last week, the anti-abortion movement crossed a major new redline. A South Carolina Senate committee voted to advance a bill that would, with almost no exceptions, not only ban abortions but also classify abortion as a misdemeanor crime for patients. The proposed law includes a highly unusual misdemeanor punishment of two years in prison. This has never happened before.

Until recently, there was a fracture in the post-Dobbs anti- abortion movement surrounding just how far it was willing to go to criminalize abortion-seekers. So-called abortion abolitionists believe that nothing short of homicide charges for women who have abortions and full personhood status for embryos and fetuses is acceptable, while other factions have taken a less absolutist approach, particularly with respect to abortion criminalization. Thanks to the men leading the “abolitionist” movement—and they are all men—15 such “abortion as homicide” bills were introduced in 2025, something that would have........

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