A Time for Choosing: Colorado or Texas?

Kyleen Wright, President, Texans for Life Coalition | 01 May 2025

There’s a new, but not so new, wave rolling through the prolife movement in the United States. One that supporters assure us will finally, finally abolish – TOTALLY END – abortion!

Supporters of this movement suggest that this is a new and novel approach, but is it really?  To those of us who have been around all five decades of the movement, it looks a lot like the same old “all or nothing” approach that has been tried over and over again, with one result:  the pro-life movement gets nothing.

While we all believe the preborn baby is a human being worthy of protection, the difference is in the fight to get there.

Supporters of the Abolish Abortion movement have gone to great lengths to shut down debate, including bullying me and others on social media who disagree, and even trying to prevent me from speaking about it at an event where I was the invited guest speaker. There is too much at stake for me to remain silent.

At issue: Traditional pro-life activists oppose the criminalization of women who have abortions.  On the other hand, supporters of Abolish Abortion / Personhood / Equal Protection insist that we will only end abortion when we hold the mother accountable by charging her with a crime, with punishments up to and including the death penalty. 

Why do long-time pro-life activists like me oppose criminalizing women?  Criminalizing women protects the abortionist at the expense of the mother, making her less likely to seek help from a pregnancy help center and far less likely to seek medical care in the event of complications.  It is an overreach that threatens the entire pro-life movement.

How does applying criminal charges to a mother protect the abortionist?  Simply put, the mother’s testimony against the abortionist is less credible if she gives it to avoid her own prosecution.  The abortion doctor has all the knowledge of the act of abortion and is under no duress.  Many of these mothers, however, are mere girls who know little about their own bodies, much less the body within theirs.

Why would a pregnant mom be less likely to visit a pregnancy center for help?  Because abortion activists, who already work overtime to undermine the great work of pregnancy help centers, will quickly spread the word that any information collected at the pregnancy center can be subpoenaed by the state and used to prosecute her if she opts for abortion.  We saw this after the Dobbs decision, when women and girls in states that outlawed abortion were told to immediately delete their period apps and all related information before it could be subpoenaed.

The pro-life community has spent 40 years working to convince young women, as well as their friends, mothers, aunts, and well, everybody, that ours is a movement of love.  Arguing that these moms should now be subject to the death penalty is quite the departure from the movement that took off under the banner of “Love them Both.”

We also know women would fear seeking medical care in the case of complications or botched abortions, because that is exactly what happened before Roe v. Wade. Women were never prosecuted, but few, if any, women knew that.  Just like then, such a policy would give the abortion zealot exactly what she seeks:  dead and maimed victim trophies to be paraded endlessly across the news.  The numbers will be exaggerated, and the fear among young people and their parents will rise exponentially.  This is largely how we got Roe in the first place.  To this day, you will have a hard time finding women in their 70’s who don’t remember women dying.

From a public health concern, we encourage young people overdosing on illegal drugs to seek help, without fear of prosecution.  Why shouldn’t we be prepared to offer the same mercy for women experiencing abortion complications while there is an opportunity to save at least her life?

Moreover, with the abortion pills, distinguishing between an elective abortion and a miscarriage can be difficult.  No matter, abolitionists say, because the threat of the death penalty is just that, a threat. 

It’s not like women and teenage girls even know the nuances of the law now, nor did they before 1973.  Stories from pregnancy center directors suggest many women are (still) just learning that abortion is illegal in Texas.  But if the death penalty is on the table, expect that news to spread like wildfire.

While the latest crop of Abolish Abortion people are convinced that the death penalty (or jail time for that matter) is the answer, they just don’t know history.   The women who know about the law do not want to risk breaking it or dealing with abortion providers who do—these women are already deterred. 

The idea that additional penalties that are not enforced will still somehow act as an additional deterrent is laughable to any parent who has experienced the futility of empty threats.

Also, you can’t control which district attorneys will be willing to make examples of women as they climb the political ladder.  Can we expect the fathers to be similarly treated?

If we are counting on the law to serve as a deterrent to frightened women, often desperate, alone, and infused with the hormone surges in early pregnancy, we need only look back about 50 years.  Women were willing to take potions, leave the state, and even perform abortions on each other when abortion was illegal in most states.  (See The Janes)

Many years ago, my British friend came home from school to find her mother dead in the bathtub from a self-induced abortion.  Abortion was illegal in England then, although she may have qualified for an exception under the law.  I doubt she knew of that possibility; she was consumed instead by the fact that she was trapped with a husband who was an alcoholic, a mean one, and the thought of a sixth child with him was overwhelming.  She wasn’t thinking about the law. I doubt she realized how high her risk of death was, or that she was consigning her daughter to inherit her troubles, as she became the mother and homemaker at age 11.  Real-life stories like this helped us understand that often, to save the baby, you first have to save the mom.

Then there is the matter of the “overreach.”  You can get a little ahead of the people in this country and give the law a chance to teach, but you can’t get too far ahead of the voters without a backlash.  We saw this in the state of Colorado, a state that used to be purple and is now deep blue.  Three times, the Personhood supporters (same as the Abolitionists) put amendments on the ballot.

Abortion activists had a field day, along with their friends in the media, telling voters that not only would abortion be illegal, but common forms of birth control and IVF would be too.  Each campaign was used to scare anti-lifers to the polls in record numbers, many of whom never would have voted at all.  Not only did the personhood amendments go down in flames, but the extra voters took out the rest of the red officeholders in the state.  [Colorado Results (rounded): 2008 Amendment 48, 73%-27%, 2010 Amendment 62, 71%-29% and 2014 Amendment 67 (modified to be slightly less restrictive) 65%-35%]

By the third time, national leaders who had previously supported or seemed to support the measure were publicly begging the Personhood supporters not to do it again, to no avail. The end result is that Colorado has become a top abortion haven. 

Politics is the art of the possible.  You won’t help the movement or save more babies by promoting policies wildly out of step with the opinions or convictions of most Americans.  Incrementalism, the bane of most Abolitionists, is in fact the only thing that has brought us positive change in the movement. 

Change, like pregnancy centers, which help countless women and save tens of thousands of babies.  Change, like legislation that has rolled back abortion laws and closed abortion clinics.  Change, that has reached into our churches and encouraged them to provide all sorts of outreach and ministry to women in crisis. 

In fact, many of us started out in the “all or nothing” crowd.  We got tired of getting nothing.  We got tired of losing.  Winning matters because it ensures we save more babies.

We may not be saving all the babies, but we are saving thousands more than we were. More than 16,000 additional babies were born in Texas in 2022 compared to 2021, after the Heartbeat ban and the Human Life Protection Act went into effect. That’s despite the abortion pills flooding our state.  Our new laws are just beginning to teach, and we haven’t stopped fighting for more.

The “all or nothing” crowd can point to no such victories. They have Colorado, we have Texas.

We have seen abortion abolitionists show their backside on social media, at the Texas Capitol, and even in their pickets.  A few years ago, a pro-life activist videotaped a group of them objecting to pregnancy help centers. They were picketing babies at an elementary school with large graphic signs of aborted babies.  They have picketed pastors at church and lawmakers who dared to disagree.  Death threats have followed their protests. 

One publicly told me to go to hell. Another, a pregnancy center staffer, posted that I am personally responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of babies.  Others mocked me and one called me a demon. This amateur schoolyard bully behavior magically ended the moment I posted their ugly taunts on X—and tagged their key lawmakers.

Are we supposed to believe these same people when they tell us they really only want the death penalty as a deterrent?  Something tells me that we know better than to believe them.

I want to save as many babies as possible, so I choose Texas.