Kristan Hawkins brought her teenage son into an Idaho coffee shop Monday to launch a new pro-life group.
The owner walked over before their coffee was even finished.
What he compared them to has pro-life families across Idaho furious.
Wydaho Roasters Owner Jim Sheehan Compares Pro-Life Teens to the KKK
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, brought her son Bear and a handful of local families to Wydaho Roasters in Driggs on Monday.
They came to launch a new local group called Abortion Free Teton Valley.
No one wore political clothing.
No one carried a sign.
One teenager wore a white hat with the initials "CK," for Charlie Kirk.
They had already paid for their coffee, pastries, and ice cream.
Owner Jim Sheehan walked over anyway.
Sheehan told them everybody was welcome, just not this particular group.
When Hawkins pointed out they were regular customers who had already bought food, Sheehan told her to take her meeting to the public library.
Then he explained why.
He said he had personally worked to put an abortion measure on Idaho's ballot, and a pro-life meeting in his shop was something he could not support.
Asked directly whether he was kicking them out, Sheehan reached for a comparison.
"It's like, if the KKK asked to meet here, I would say no," he said.
When Hawkins asked him straight out if he saw pro-lifers as the same as the Klan, Sheehan confirmed that in his mind, it was exactly the same idea.
Everyone Welcome Except Pro-Lifers at This Driggs Idaho Coffee Shop
A sign in Wydaho Roasters' window reads "EVERYONE WELCOME."
The shop has hosted a Queer Coffee Hour and a meet-and-greet for a Democratic Socialists of America candidate.
It also held a vigil for two left-wing activists killed while protesting ICE.
Every corner of the far left gets a table at Wydaho Roasters.
The same owner has sponsored adoption events with the local animal shelter, finding homes for stray cats and dogs.
Pro-life mothers and their teenage sons were apparently the exception.
Hawkins didn't let the KKK line slide.
"They compared US to the KKK, even though Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, spoke for the KKK," she said.
Sanger addressed a women's branch of the Klan in New Jersey in 1926, a fact pro-life historians have cited for decades.
Sheehan later told reporters the group was never kicked out and claimed the video had been edited to make him look bad.
He said he had asked them the day before to meet somewhere else and they had shown up anyway.
The video, posted by Hawkins herself, shows him ordering them out in real time.
Customers have since flooded the shop with negative reviews, and some say they will never go back.
Wydaho Roasters has not announced any policy change in response.
Bear Hawkins and the Idaho Abortion Ballot Measure Coming in November
Bear Hawkins, sixteen, founded Abortion Free Teton Valley himself.
That hat marked him as a Students for Life Action Charlie Kirk Courage Fellow, the same program that gave him the training to launch his own local chapter.
His goal was simple: organize Idaho families ahead of a November 3 ballot measure that would roll back the state's abortion ban.
Idaho currently bans abortion in nearly every circumstance, with narrow exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.
The ballot measure would let abortion continue up to the point a baby could survive outside the womb, and Sheehan told the group himself that he had worked to get it in front of voters.
This is the environment a sixteen-year-old is organizing in, eleven weeks before Idaho votes.
Sheehan didn't debate Bear's ideas.
He compared Bear's mother to the Klan and told a group of paying customers, including children, to leave his store.
Hawkins said the group has no plans to stop organizing and intends to keep fighting for the unborn regardless of the backlash.
Idaho voters decide the underlying question on November 3.
Jim Sheehan already told them exactly which side he's willing to humiliate teenagers for.
Sources:
- Steven Ertelt, "Coffee Shop Kicks Out Pro-Life Students, Compares Them to KKK," LifeNews, August 18, 2026.
- "Leftist Coffee Shop Owner Kicks Out Pro-Life Leader and Her Children, Compares Them to KKK," LifeSiteNews, August 18, 2026.
- "Students for Life President & Children Kicked Out of Idaho Coffee Shop by Owner Who Compared Pro-Life Americans to the KKK," Students for Life of America, August 17, 2026.
