When an Abortion ‘Abolitionist’ Becomes Your State Senator
Herndon, the anti-abortion activist-turned-state senator who also has IFF ties, made waves several times during his first legislative session in 2023. In the course of debate surrounding Idaho’s first-of-its-kind “abortion trafficking” bill, for example—which made it a crime for a non-parent or guardian to help a minor get an abortion in Idaho—Herndon argued the bill should go further, criminalizing parents and guardians as well. (Enforcement of the law is currently blocked as a legal challenge proceeds.)
Herndon also unsuccessfully attempted to remove the rape and incest exceptions from Idaho’s criminal abortion ban. (These exceptions are already so narrow that the Department of Justice has argued they violate federal law.) Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow pushed back, asking Herndon if hypothetically his bill would force a 13-year-old girl who had been raped by a family member to continue her pregnancy.
In response, Herndon referred to such a situation as an “opportunity.”
“I got shell shock, and that’s the only way I can describe it,” Wintrow said when I met her in Boise in late October. “Because it was so violent for a senator to say there should be no exceptions for rape or incest for an abortion.”
Most mainstream anti-abortion groups are careful to say they don’t support criminalizing pregnant people for seeking abortions. The model legislation they draft focuses on the actions of doctors instead. But Herndon was a leader of the North Idaho chapter of Abolish Human Abortion (AHA), one of a handful of groups on the anti-abortion movement’s fringe in which members identify as “abolitionists.”
“Pro-life is the expression of a moral opinion. Abolition is the expression of a moral action,” the AHA website reads. “When you call yourself ‘pro-life’ you are letting people know what you think about abortion. When you call yourself an abolitionist, you are telling them what you aim to do about it.”
These self-identified “abolitionists” believe fervently that abortion is homicide. Most also want pregnant people who seek abortion to be imprisoned or even face the death penalty. And one of the prongs of their approach is “agitation.” In other words, AHA members are encouraged to be confrontational. You can see evidence of this on Herdon’s YouTube channel, where recent videos show him speaking on the floor of the state legislature, but older ones feature AHA actions. In one video, Herdon’s children sing a song with lyrics referring to abortion as “child sacrifice” and “a Holocaust disguised.”
While AHA admonishes members to be nonviolent, the group argues it is within the state’s power to use violence to end abortion. Perhaps, then, it’s no surprise that a leader of this movement would work his way into government. And according to an ex-member of AHA North Idaho—whose name has been changed to “Casey,” to protect their anonymity—Herdon’s beliefs don’t stop there.
“I remember them talking about how the government should be a Christian theocracy,” said Casey.
When I met with Casey late in October, it was cold and gloomy in North Idaho. Everyone was gearing up for the season’s first snow. But Casey had walked instead of driving, because that morning they’d awoken to find the rear window of their car smashed in. Was it an accident, a random robbery attempt, or a threat?
“I have to think about that,” Casey said. “It’s intimidating sometimes.”
Casey grew up in a fundamentalist Christian church, which they describe as a cult. They were homeschooled and generally “raised away from society,” all of which they believe made them particularly susceptible to extremist ideologies. They were drawn to AHA because they felt they weren’t being encouraged to do enough to end abortion within their own church. If abortion is murder, Casey wondered, why aren’t we speaking out against it?
Then they encountered the “abolitionist” movement.
“I started watching all their YouTube videos, and it was all these people that call themselves Christians who were boldly declaring their faith … applying their faith to confront culture, is how they always presented it,” they said.
Casey was hooked and became an active member of the group, joining protests at local schools, stores, events, and at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Spokane, Washington, about an hour and a half away from Sandpoint. But then community members started pushing back.
“It made me really paranoid to be in Sandpoint because I felt like people were looking at me and targeting me,” Casey said. Around the same time, a group of women from the original AHA group in Oklahoma started to speak up about misogyny within their movement.
“They started basically educating me on women’s issues from a Christian perspective,” Casey said. “If God created everybody equal, and that’s the platform we’re running on to say ‘unborn’ children have rights, then why don’t women have equal rights?” Ultimately, Casey was one of several people kicked out for standing up for that idea.
Casey is also queer and recognizes now that fear and self-hatred was part of what drove their actions in the past.
“I grew up hating myself because I thought [my sexuality] was a crime. It was against God. I tried to kill myself over it, and I never got help from the church,” they said. “And so as I’ve gotten away from that kind of thing—this is going to sound really cliché—but I try to be the person that I wish I would’ve had when I was younger.”