Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY; "Let’s be plain about what happened: a frontrunner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination left the door open to jailing abortion patients. Shocking—but not surprising. In 2022, Vance actually questioned whether a “federal response” was necessary to stop women from crossing state lines for care. He’s always been an extremist. The next journalist who gets Vance in a room has a moral responsibility to ask him directly: do you oppose prosecuting women for abortion? Will you promise, on the record, to reject any such efforts? We all know he won’t answer. This is a powerful pressure point—and Democrats should be using it everywhere, not just in national races. (The catch: we don’t want Republicans using that as an opportunity to paint themselves as moderates simply for not wanting to execute or jail women.)"
STORY: "JD Vance Is Open to Prosecuting Abortion Patients," by Jessica Valente, published by 'Abortion, Every Day,' on June 25, 2026. (Jessica Valente: Feminist writer, NYC native. 8 books, 1 kid & a lot of opinions. My latest book, Abortion, is out now: prh.com/abortion);
SUB-HEADING: "Punishing Women Gains Mainstream Momentum
GIST: "More of this please: The New York Times published an article yesterday about the growing call to punish abortion patients.
You all know this is something I’ve been warning about for years. Not too long ago, I predicted the country was “on the verge of a major criminalization push”—a warning that proved unfortunately prescient. ‘Abolitionists’ who want to punish women with the death penalty are introducing more bills than ever, running more candidates, and are becoming more accepted by the ‘mainstream’ anti-abortion movement.
Yet somehow they’re still being dismissed as radical outliers—even as the TexasRepublican party adopted an “equal protection” plank and Students for Life became the first national anti-abortion organization to endorse legislation that would punish patients.
We urgently need a broad, mainstream audience to understand just how quickly the push to jail women has been normalized. So yes, I was thrilled to see this Times piece. Reporter Caroline Kitchener also published some important scoops:
A group of more than 60 conservative leaders and influencers signed a public petition calling for the end of “legal immunities” for abortion—aka exempting patients from prosecution. (I specifically warned about the terms ‘immunity’ and ‘loophole’ a little over a year ago.)
Kitchener also reports that Texas Right to Life—arguably the state’s most powerful anti-abortion group—is “formulating an idea to test the political waters on the issue.” They want to target a narrow group of women—those with medical licenses—and revoke those licenses if they’re caught taking abortion pills. Consider how truly nefarious this is: they don’t just want to punish women, they want to strip them of their ability to work. We know that’s what conservatives want for women more broadly, so it’s a particularly telling move.
And then there’s our favorite psychopaths, Students for Life (SFL)—which did some clever maneuvering in their statement to the Times. Communications director Kelsey Pritchard said, “We do not support legislation to attach criminal penalties to women and qualify them for the death penalty.” Does that mean they support penalties that wouldn’t qualify women for the death penalty?
After all, it was just in April when AED uncovered that the group endorsed a South Carolina bill that would jail women for two years (rather than life). And president Kristan Hawkins has been dropping hints about punishing patients for a while now—saying the movement is “working to change culture” before they explicitly call for punishing women. She repeated a similar sentiment to Kitchener:
“My message is, ‘not now,’ but I’m not saying ‘not ever. You have to make abortion unthinkable before you get to that point when you ask, how are you going to prosecute?”
There’s something else I’d love SFL to answer: since they believe common forms of birth control (like oral contraceptives) are actually ’abortifacients’, does that mean they believe women who take the Pill should be prosecuted, too? Just wondering!
JD Vance Is Open to Prosecuting Abortion Patients
I wish we were done talking about the push to punish patients, but alas—JD Vance has made that impossible. The vice president weighed in on the abolitionist movement in a podcast last week, and the Times reports, “Mr. Vance hinted at the potential peril for Republicans in expressing opposition to the idea, saying that ‘we can’t be immune to the realities of modern politics.”
But Vance was actually a lot more open to the idea of jailing women than that quote leads readers to believe. Here’s what he said:
“We can’t be immune to the realities of modern politics, and I worry sometimes that we have lost the persuasion battle and that’s what really has to change for the pro-life community to win big in the future.”
Essentially, Vance is taking Hawkins’ stance: that the anti-abortion movement needs to get Americans on board before politicians will follow. He’s not saying he opposes punishing abortion patients. In fact, Vance comes back to ‘abolition’ a few moments later—to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln, and abortion to slavery.
“You know, who ultimately freed the slaves? Was it William Lloyd Garrison or was it Abraham Lincoln? It was the pragmatic guy who was working within the confines of the system. And I, I think that’s fundamentally how we have to think about this, is that we have to be pragmatic, we have to win the argument, and then we can save the lives of many unborn kids.”
Watch for yourself, if you can stomach it:
Let’s be plain about what happened: a frontrunner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination left the door open to jailing abortion patients. Shocking—but not surprising. In 2022, Vance actually questioned whether a “federal response” was necessary to stop women from crossing state lines for care. He’s always been an extremist.
The next journalist who gets Vance in a room has a moral responsibility to ask him directly: do you oppose prosecuting women for abortion? Will you promise, on the record, to reject any such efforts? We all know he won’t answer.
This is a powerful pressure point—and Democrats should be using it everywhere, not just in national races. (The catch: we don’t want Republicans using that as an opportunity to paint themselves as moderates simply for not wanting to execute or jail women.)""
The entire commentary can be reached at:
https://jessica.substack.com/p/jd-vance-is-open-to-prosecuting-abortion?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=11153&post_id=203452253&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=xbsk&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;
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SUB-HEADING: "Punishing Women Gains Mainstream Momentum
GIST: "More of this please: The New York Times published an article yesterday about the growing call to punish abortion patients.
You all know this is something I’ve been warning about for years. Not too long ago, I predicted the country was “on the verge of a major criminalization push”—a warning that proved unfortunately prescient. ‘Abolitionists’ who want to punish women with the death penalty are introducing more bills than ever, running more candidates, and are becoming more accepted by the ‘mainstream’ anti-abortion movement.
Yet somehow they’re still being dismissed as radical outliers—even as the TexasRepublican party adopted an “equal protection” plank and Students for Life became the first national anti-abortion organization to endorse legislation that would punish patients.
We urgently need a broad, mainstream audience to understand just how quickly the push to jail women has been normalized. So yes, I was thrilled to see this Times piece. Reporter Caroline Kitchener also published some important scoops:
A group of more than 60 conservative leaders and influencers signed a public petition calling for the end of “legal immunities” for abortion—aka exempting patients from prosecution. (I specifically warned about the terms ‘immunity’ and ‘loophole’ a little over a year ago.)
Kitchener also reports that Texas Right to Life—arguably the state’s most powerful anti-abortion group—is “formulating an idea to test the political waters on the issue.” They want to target a narrow group of women—those with medical licenses—and revoke those licenses if they’re caught taking abortion pills. Consider how truly nefarious this is: they don’t just want to punish women, they want to strip them of their ability to work. We know that’s what conservatives want for women more broadly, so it’s a particularly telling move.
And then there’s our favorite psychopaths, Students for Life (SFL)—which did some clever maneuvering in their statement to the Times. Communications director Kelsey Pritchard said, “We do not support legislation to attach criminal penalties to women and qualify them for the death penalty.” Does that mean they support penalties that wouldn’t qualify women for the death penalty?
After all, it was just in April when AED uncovered that the group endorsed a South Carolina bill that would jail women for two years (rather than life). And president Kristan Hawkins has been dropping hints about punishing patients for a while now—saying the movement is “working to change culture” before they explicitly call for punishing women. She repeated a similar sentiment to Kitchener:
“My message is, ‘not now,’ but I’m not saying ‘not ever. You have to make abortion unthinkable before you get to that point when you ask, how are you going to prosecute?”
There’s something else I’d love SFL to answer: since they believe common forms of birth control (like oral contraceptives) are actually ’abortifacients’, does that mean they believe women who take the Pill should be prosecuted, too? Just wondering!
JD Vance Is Open to Prosecuting Abortion Patients
I wish we were done talking about the push to punish patients, but alas—JD Vance has made that impossible. The vice president weighed in on the abolitionist movement in a podcast last week, and the Times reports, “Mr. Vance hinted at the potential peril for Republicans in expressing opposition to the idea, saying that ‘we can’t be immune to the realities of modern politics.”
But Vance was actually a lot more open to the idea of jailing women than that quote leads readers to believe. Here’s what he said:
“We can’t be immune to the realities of modern politics, and I worry sometimes that we have lost the persuasion battle and that’s what really has to change for the pro-life community to win big in the future.”
Essentially, Vance is taking Hawkins’ stance: that the anti-abortion movement needs to get Americans on board before politicians will follow. He’s not saying he opposes punishing abortion patients. In fact, Vance comes back to ‘abolition’ a few moments later—to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln, and abortion to slavery.
“You know, who ultimately freed the slaves? Was it William Lloyd Garrison or was it Abraham Lincoln? It was the pragmatic guy who was working within the confines of the system. And I, I think that’s fundamentally how we have to think about this, is that we have to be pragmatic, we have to win the argument, and then we can save the lives of many unborn kids.”
Watch for yourself, if you can stomach it:
Let’s be plain about what happened: a frontrunner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination left the door open to jailing abortion patients. Shocking—but not surprising. In 2022, Vance actually questioned whether a “federal response” was necessary to stop women from crossing state lines for care. He’s always been an extremist.
The next journalist who gets Vance in a room has a moral responsibility to ask him directly: do you oppose prosecuting women for abortion? Will you promise, on the record, to reject any such efforts? We all know he won’t answer.
This is a powerful pressure point—and Democrats should be using it everywhere, not just in national races. (The catch: we don’t want Republicans using that as an opportunity to paint themselves as moderates simply for not wanting to execute or jail women.)""
The entire commentary can be reached at:
https://jessica.substack.com/p/jd-vance-is-open-to-prosecuting-abortion?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=11153&post_id=203452253&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=xbsk&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;
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