Kristan Hawkins Wraps 'Feminists Lied' Campus Debate Tour With Turning Point USA

Kristan Hawkins spent the past three weeks doing what the late Charlie Kirk did best: setting up a microphone on a college lawn and inviting anyone who disagreed to argue. The Students for Life of America president led "Feminists Lied: Prove Me Wrong," her group's first joint campus series with Turning Point USA, built to challenge the idea that feminism and legal abortion have helped women more than they have hurt them, Catholic News Agency reported.

The tour opened Oct. 20 at the University of North Texas, with stops also planned at Grand Valley State, Boise State and Southern Oregon universities and at the universities of Cincinnati, New Mexico, Arizona and Washington. After the opener, Hawkins, a Catholic, wrote on X that the effort stands in line with the legacy of Kirk, Turning Point's founder, who was assassinated on Sept. 10, 2025, during a college debating tour. Her core argument is that young women were taught abortion was the cost of equality, and that motherhood is "not a weakness to be overcome".

At Boise State on Oct. 27, Hawkins stood under a canopy tent outside the Student Union for about two hours, with two cameras rolling and a microphone open to any challenger, the campus newspaper The Arbiter reported. Students pressed her on in vitro fertilization, abortion after rape or incest, and Idaho's Proposition 1 ballot measure, which the host Turning Point chapter's vice president described as deceptive and ambiguous.

Reactions varied. A senior who sparred with Hawkins for nearly half an hour said the format gives the speaker more control of the conversation, while a freshman who came after seeing clips online called it a good way to test or strengthen one's views. A voter-registration group urged students beforehand not to engage, arguing the format was not built for good-faith debate. Campus and city police watched from the edge of the crowd, and the paper reported no incidents.

At the University of Arizona, where Turning Point brought the debate to the campus Mall on Election Day, Hawkins said she hoped the discussions "helped more students see that every human life has value," Tucson Spotlight reported.

Not every answer came at the microphone. In Tucson, Planned Parenthood Generation Action and other student groups set up tables nearby and played music over a loudspeaker, though the outlet said all sides appeared to be following the university's campus-use rules.

In Albuquerque, the reaction crossed a line. University of New Mexico police arrested two men accused of plotting to throw objects into the crowd on the day the campus Turning Point chapter hosted a debate featuring Hawkins, Fox News reported. Prosecutors allege one man hurled a lacrosse ball that nearly struck someone; he faces charges including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, while the second man faces conspiracy and other charges. No injuries were reported, neither man's guilt has been established, and the university said it upholds freedom of expression but will not tolerate threats or violence.

The tour made its final stop Tuesday at the University of Washington, where a man in a dress spent about two hours playing an accordion in an effort to drown out the debate, Seattle Red reported. Hawkins called the exchanges lively and mostly polite anyway. To critics who accuse her of provoking students for viral clips, she replied, "I'm an activist trying to enact cultural and political change".

Hawkins also faces a Texas lawsuit she likens to "going after the person reporting a fire instead of the arsonist," EWTN News reported. A pseudonymous plaintiff claims she and three Students for Life staff members broke the Texas Woman and Child Protection Act, a 2025 law allowing private citizens to sue those who provide abortion-inducing drugs in the state, by ordering pills during a March undercover investigation in Houston. The defendants say the probe documented illegal mailings of those drugs into Texas, involved no woman who was pregnant or seeking an abortion, and is protected speech and reporting.

The suit seeks $459,782 in damages and an injunction against Students for Life, even though the organization is not a party to the case. Thomas More Society attorneys, joined by Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain as co-counsel, argue the plaintiff lacks standing, and the defendants plan to seek sanctions against the plaintiff's lawyers; no hearing has been set.

My take: a little more than a year after Kirk was killed on a campus tour, the pro-life movement did not retreat from the quad. It pitched a tent and handed its critics a microphone for as long as they cared to hold it. Students who disagreed said so, on the record and at length, which is how a free university should work. The people who tried to end the conversation brought an accordion and, prosecutors allege, a lacrosse ball. A movement confident in the dignity of mothers and their unborn children welcomes the argument. Colleges that prize open inquiry should welcome it too, and protect everyone who shows up to take part.