WASHINGTON — Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins challenged President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to take three immediate actions as the 2026 midterm elections rapidly approach.
Hawkins, a prominent pro-life leader, called on the federal government to defund Planned Parenthood “for good,” invoke a 150-year-old law to prevent abortion pills being sent through the mail, and pull the mifepristone abortion medication “from the shelves” during her Saturday speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference in Washington, D.C. She also suggested that pro-life Republican voters want to see a return for their political support and suggested the coalition which facilitated the GOP’s legislative majorities may be “fragile.”
“Today, I’m going to say three things … President Trump … and his administration and Congress must do right now,” the 41-year-old pro-life activist said during her speech. “First, defund Planned Parenthood for good.” Hawkins then called the organization which provides both abortions and child sex changes “the nation’s largest killer of children and the largest sterilizer of our gender-confused young people.”
Hawkins, who runs one of the largest anti-abortion advocacy groups in the nation, said that if “the Senate fails to renew last year’s defunding of Planned Parenthood by July 4” then the organization “stands to gain more than $600 million of our taxpayer dollars.”
After years of trying to strip the abortion giant of federal Medicaid funding, Republicans finally succeeded — albeit for only one full year — with the passage of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which Trump signed into law in July 2025. Republican lawmakers initially intended for the bill to defund Planned Parenthood for 10 years but substantially shortened the time frame to one year following the input of Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.
The prospect of extending the defunding beyond its July 4 expiration, however, is “unlikely,” outgoing Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines told News Of The United States (NOTUS) on Monday. Daines explained the defunding could only be plausibly extended if it was attached to “a third reconciliation bill,” which he noted would be “hard to pass.”
Hawkins said that, in addition to renewing the Planned Parenthood defunding, the Senate must also prioritize passing the SAVE America Act, a major election integrity bill and key political priority of Trump.
“We must enforce the law that’s already on our books,” she continued, referring to the Comstock Act of 1873, an anti-obscenity law which explicitly prevents sending anything “designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion” via mail.
While the so-called “zombie” law is legally active, it remains largely unenforced.
Hawkins stated the Comstock Act is “being violated thousands of times every day when chemical abortion pills are being shipped into pro-life states … across the country.” She clarified she is not calling for any new law to be made but for Trump to “issue a memo” enforcing the law with respect to abortion drugs.
After outlining those priorities for the Senate and president, Hawkins turned her attention to the Trump administration’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“The Biden-Harris FDA partnered with Planned Parenthood to flood our states … with chemical abortion pills, which are now the leading killer of children. What you don’t know is those pills are 22 times more dangerous than the FDA ever told us for women. One in 10 women will end up in [the] ER [hospital emergency room] with life-threatening complications,” Hawkins said, appearing to refer to the results of a 2025 study by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC).
“Not only are they killing babies and harming mothers, we have found they are polluting our drinking water supply,” she added, echoing recent concerns by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that potable water sources may be contaminated with mifepristone. “The Trump FDA and EPA can act swiftly right now today to pull mifepristone from the shelves.”
Hawkins, a Republican, cautioned that while coalitions “win elections,” they “are fragile things,” and warned GOP leaders against continuing to delay “doing what we elected them [to do].”
“This week we started our week at Students for Life on the picket line in front of the RNC [Republican National Committee] headquarters here in town, not because we’re anyone’s enemy, because we wanted to remind the Party that we all belong to that we have to see a return on our investments,” she said. “We want to keep this coalition together for November.”
“We must demand that President Trump and Congress speak up, because it’s not just lobbying firm, friends. We’re doers,” Hawkins stated.
(DCNF)
