Video shows “Sister Cindy,” an anti-abortion preacher and TikTok star, speaking sarcastically

An edited video of a woman who appears to be speaking enthusiastically about abortion is being falsely portrayed on social media.

"Absolute evil. Listen to her voice and the cheering..," read a May 7 Facebook post. The post shared a TikTok video where a woman tells a crowd, "Ladies, if you get pregnant, run on down to the abortion clinic and have that little bastard sucked right out!" 

A crowd of young people watching her cheer and laugh.

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Several social media users, including high-profile conservatives, have shared the video, and suggested it shows the cruelty of abortion rights supporters.

"The proof that this isn't about health...It's about death," Sebastian Gorka, a former aide to President Donald Trump, tweeted on May 7. He tweeted the video again a day later, calling it "Truly Satanic."

"Highlight reel footage for the midterms," conservative commentator Mike Cernovich tweeted on May 7.

But the claim that this person is actually advocating abortion misses context about who the speaker is and what she has said she believes.

The video appears to have originated on TikTok, where it amassed nearly 3 million views. "This just in: Sister Cindy supports abortion," reads the caption, which is a clue that the video is not what it seems.

"Sister Cindy," whose real name is Cindy Smock, is a Christian evangelist from Indiana who travels with her husband to, she writes on the ministry’s website, "share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the students of America." The husband-and-wife team have been traveling to college campuses around the country for more than 40 years. Smock often uses inflammatory rhetoric, and sometimes comedy, in her speeches and commentary. Some of her comments have been criticized as being homophobic and racist. 

"My husband and I take the confrontational approach to Evangelism," Smock told Vice in a 2021 interview. "We go out on the campuses and call the students to repentance and faith in Jesus."

Smock has become a TikTok star, amassing over 400,000 followers who watch videos of her campus visits and buy her merchandise or order videos of her "roasting" their friends. 

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A woman holds a sign that says, “I want my daughter to have the right to abortion that I didn’t have.”

Students can be seen in videos flocking to Smock’s campus appearances, cheering her on, perhaps ironically, jeering her or laughing at or with her as she welcomes them to her "slut-shaming show." 

Some ask her to pose for selfies and others have joined her in a TikTok dance for her channel. She’s also drawn criticism from some who find her rhetoric offensive or hateful.

In another video of her abortion comments filmed at Missouri State University on May 3, Gregory Holman, a reporter for KSMU, a local public radio station, tweeted that her remarks about women running down to abortion clinics were sarcastic and came in response to students chanting "my body, my choice."

We reached out to Smock to find out more context about the video being widely shared but she didn’t respond. However, on her TikTok account, she shared the video where she spoke about abortion, with a text overlay that reads, "When Gen Z, the masters of satire, are outwitted by Sis. Cindy." 

She then snapped her fingers in approval after hearing the line that has garnered so much attention online. A text overlay at the bottom of  the video reads, "Your choice but, ‘Shall not the JUDGE of the earth do right?’"

Some commenters on her Tik-Tok video still seemed confused about her position on abortion. 

One asked her what she thought of abortion as a live-saving procedure, and Smock replied it’s "between her and God!!" Further down, another commenter posted "Jeremiah 1:5," to which she replied, "exactly."

That Bible verse reads: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations."

But in another TikTok video, she urged her followers to head to Truth Social, Trump’s fledgling social network, to find out what she really believes. 

"So what does Sister Cindy really believe?" she says in the video on Truth Social. "Roe vs. Wade? Well, I believe that life begins at conception, and of course I'm pro-life." 

A video claims to show an abortion rights supporter brazenly encourage young women to go get abortions. But the woman shown in the video is a longtime evangelist who travels the country to preach at college campuses, often using crude language and over-the-top rhetoric as satire to try to relate to the young students. In a video on Truth Social she described herself as "pro-life." 

We rate this claim False.

PolitiFact reporter Yacob Reyes contributed to this report.