Op-Ed: This Pro-Life Bill Treats Babies Like a Special Kind of Garbage

Suppose that rape were legal in the United States. Suppose also that an anti-rape advocacy group were to respond by proposing a bill that keeps rape perfectly legal and refuses to punish rapists — as long as the rapist drops his victim at a local shelter once he is finished with her.

We would rightly question whether that anti-rape group actually wants to ban rape. We would even question whether that group considers rape a heinous moral evil in the first place.

But this exact same incoherence has been displayed by Students for Life, which is championing a bill that keeps abortion legal — as long as the corpse of the murdered baby is not flushed down the toilet afterward.

The so-called Clean Water for All Life Act, proposed in several states over the past few years and in Congress last week, centers on the increasing prevalence of abortion pills, which are now used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States. The babies murdered by means of abortion pills are often miscarried into the toilet and then flushed away by their own mothers.

But instead of addressing the abomination of murdering a preborn baby, the bill only targets the specific act of flushing the baby — leaving the act of abortion untouched in the process.

The model language for the Clean Water for All Life Act says that abortion providers are allowed to distribute abortion pills as long as they provide “a catch kit and medical waste bag” for the woman who takes the substances. After she successfully completes the abortion, the woman is expected to collect the remains of her murdered baby using the device, as well as “bring the catch kit and medical waste bag” back to the abortionist for “proper disposal.”

Why are Pro-Life groups like @StudentsforLife and @SFLAction trying to protect fish instead of babies? pic.twitter.com/JUdYE0LkmA

— Foundation to Abolish Abortion (@AbolitionistFAA) October 21, 2025

Rather than treating preborn babies as equally valuable as born people, the Clean Water for All Life Act sanitizes the act of baby murder. The bill treats preborn babies not as image-bearers of God, but as a special type of garbage — with just enough dignity to be discarded as medical waste instead of excrement, but not quite enough dignity to be protected from murder in the first place.

Students for Life infamously believes that women are always the second victims of abortion and should never be held accountable for willfully murdering their preborn babies. The legislation also says that “a patient on whom an abortion is conducted may not be prosecuted for a violation of this section or conspiracy to violate this section.” The only penalties in the bill are fines and potential five-year prison sentences for abortionists.

In other words, a woman who wants to use abortion pills can entirely ignore the Clean Water for All Life Act, because the legislation ensures she cannot be held accountable in any way for willfully having an abortion. This alone renders the bill completely useless — a mere performative gesture that pretends to oppose abortion pills while actively protecting their use.

Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins seems to acknowledge that this legislation does not directly address the heinous nature of abortion. Hawkins called the bill “a creative response, an out-of-the-box response” to the issue of abortion pills by leveraging environmentalism.

The strategy behind the Clean Water for All Life Act appears to hinge upon fooling Democrats — who treat the murder of preborn babies as a blood sacrament — into supporting anti-abortion legislation because of their environmental concerns. Hawkins has not spent enough time around Democrats and their cultish devotion to abortion if she believes this strategy will actually work.

The issue of abortion does not require creativity or out-of-the-box thinking. The issue of abortion does not require intricate messaging, complicated strategy, or five-dimensional political chess.

The issue of abortion is incredibly simple — since preborn babies are human persons and image-bearers of God, the taking of their lives is murder, and murder must be criminalized.

Rather than deflecting from these simple truths, Christian conservatives should stand on them boldly, never apologizing or surrendering to the supporters of legalized baby murder.

We do not regulate heinous moral evils like rape. We deter rape with the threat of harsh criminal penalties and punish those who would dare to commit such an act. In the same way, abortion should not be regulated, and should certainly not be sanitized with desperate attempts at slick political strategy.

Students for Life has abundantly proven with the Clean Water for All Life Act that such attempts only make the anti-abortion side look laughably foolish and downright immoral — needlessly surrendering the moral high ground to the abortion cultists who rejoice in the murder of babies.

Christian conservatives should instead advance legislation that treats preborn babies like the image-bearers of God they truly are, establishing equal protection of the laws for preborn babies and truly abolishing abortion. We can flush any other legislation down the toilet.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either d or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.

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