Abolition Bill

The five tenets of abolitionism are the foundation of our public theology. Now, we will address what abolitionism looks like when applied to legislation.

1) Abolition Bills Outlaw Abortion From Conception
First and foremost, an abolition bill establishes that there is no right to murder a preborn human being at any stage. An abolition bill does not regulate which preborn human beings are old enough to be protected by law – it outlaws abortion itself. Any law regarding the legality of abortion which fails to outlaw the murder of preborn human beings from conception implicitly or explicitly legitimizes the murder of some children and is therefore iniquitous and entirely unacceptable.

2) Abolition Bills Have No Exceptions
An abolition bill does not leave any preborn humans unprotected by law, unlike most pro-life bills which allow for exceptions. Three exceptions in particular are present in many pro-life bills: the rape exception, incest exception, and life/health of the mother exception.

A) Babies Conceived in Rape
Rape is a terrible crime. It should be a capital crime. Those who commit this heinous act should face swift justice, and victims of rape should receive the support of their families and communities. But we must not allow the murder of a child for the sins of the father. Babies conceived in rape are still made in the image of God and deserve equal protection under the law.

B) Babies Conceived in Incest/Babies With Disabilities
Children conceived by incest are human beings, and the fact that a child might have a disability does not justify murdering them. This exception for abortion is so patently evil, absurd, and heartless toward the preborn child as well as born people with disabilities that it is hard to believe anyone makes it.

C) Babies Whose Mother is in Danger
Regarding situations where the life of the mother is in jeopardy, there is no need for the intentional murder of the child. There are cases where the child must be delivered early, and in those cases, the child may have a lower probability of survival than a child born at full-term, but intentional murder must not be allowed as an option. Doctors must be healers, not killers.

Abolition bills treat these emergency situations like the triage situations that they are. The doctor must treat both patients like human beings. Doctors are fulfilling their rightful role if they are doing what they can to preserve the most human life that they can. That does not mean murdering the baby can be used as an answer for any pregnancy complication, but it does mean that doctors in triage situations must do what they can to preserve as many lives as possible, and should not face any penalty as long as they are doing so in good faith.

3) Abolition Bills Establish Equal Protection for Preborn Children
The idea that mothers should have full legal immunity from prosecution in the murder of their children is an entrenched pro-life dogma that many pro-life organizations and leaders have cited in their opposition to abolition bills.
An abolition bill makes preborn human beings completely equal under the law, as mandated by the 14th amendment. That means murdering or being an accomplice to the murder of a preborn human being comes with the same legal penalty as murdering or being an accomplice to the murder of a born human being. Pro-life bills which give automatic legal immunity to the mother in all cases deprive preborn human beings of equal justice and protection. There are three important reasons why an exemption for abortion must not be given to the mother.

A) Providing Immunity to the Mother Means Legal DIY Abortion
In 2019, Cari Sietstra, a board member of the National Abortion Federation, published an article in The New York Times calling pro-life and pro-choice people to work together toward a do-it-yourself (DIY) abortion industry that is allowed under all pro-life legislation:

“We can work to fully decriminalize self-induced abortions. This is an area where all Americans, including pro-life Americans, can work together. The Pro-Life Movement has insisted for decades that women should not be prosecuted for self- abortion … Working together to decriminalize self-managed abortion will curb these risks.”

As Sietstra pointed out, pro-life lobbyists and politicians literally create a right to abortion as long as the murder is accomplished without the help of a third party. What she advocates is in accordance with the legal strategy of the Pro-Life Movement. The abortion industry is quickly moving toward DIY abortions, meaning that the real accomplishment of pro-life regulations is expediting the evolution of the abortion industry toward earlier, self-induced abortions. That evolution is happening fast. Mail-order abortion pill services and online abortion counseling services have been operating in countries where abortion is illegal for years.
Among other reasons, pro-life laws should be rejected because they legalize self- induced abortions. Abortion is not actually abolished if the mother is free to commit murder with impunity.

B) Penalties are Deterrents
The penalties for stealing do not completely get rid of theft, but they do deter many would-be thieves. One of the few things on which pro-choice and pro-life people agree is that abortion is often a difficult decision. While some commit murder without ever considering keeping their baby, it is a close call for most. That call would no longer be close if homicide charges were added to one side of the scale.

At the 2020 Abolition Now Conference, abolitionist Cheryl Cali told the audience that her child would be with her today had equal justice been provided to preborn children at the time of her abortion: “If I were not exempt from being prosecuted for murdering my own child, I would not have gone into a Planned Parenthood at 15 years old and killed my baby.”

Abolitionist Jill Robbins echoed Cheryl: “If only abortion had not been an option, how different things might have played out for my life and for sure the life of my child who didn’t get a chance to live his life. Righteous laws restrain evil behavior.”
Removing immunity for mothers who choose abortion does not mean we will charge a million mothers and fathers who made excruciating decisions with murder every year. It means the vast majority will never murder their children in the first place. Penalties are a deterrent.

Of course, there are often difficult circumstances which lead to abortion. We should have compassion for people in those circumstances, which is exactly why we must not leave the murderous, soul-damaging option of self-induced abortion on the table for them. We must make sure the law teaches them the right things and deters murder. Pro-life laws which do not criminalize abortion provide no reason not to have an abortion and are thus unloving toward mothers and fathers considering abortion.

C) Roe v. Wade Relied on This Very Inconsistency
Thinking that it strengthens their case for automatic immunity for mothers who murder their children, pro-life leaders often highlight the fact that most pre-Roe abortion bans only penalized the abortionist. This is true, but what they do not know, or simply do not want to acknowledge, is that these immunities for the mother are a huge part of the court’s decision to force legal abortion on the states in the first place.

In the Roe case, the State of Texas argued that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause provided unborn human beings protection against murder, just like the law protected everyone else against murder. However, Texas’ pro-life laws gave full immunity to the parents who had their children murdered. Accordingly, Justice Harry Blackmun explained in footnote 54 of the Roe decision that these immunities legally undercut the anti-abortion argument.

“There are other inconsistencies between Fourteenth Amendment status and the typical abortion statute,” Blackmun wrote. “It has already been pointed out that in Texas the woman is not a principal or an accomplice with respect to an abortion upon her. If the fetus is a person, why is the woman not a principal or an accomplice? Further, the penalty for criminal abortion specified by Art. 1195 is significantly less than the maximum penalty for murder prescribed by Art. 1257 of the Texas Penal Code. If the fetus is a person, may the penalties be different?”

Blackmun is essentially saying, “If pro-lifers actually think preborn human beings are equal to all of us, why don’t pro-lifers classify abortion as murder? And why do pro-lifers give full immunity to people who have preborn human beings murdered? If pro-lifers don’t treat preborn humans like people why should the court?”

These historic pro-life laws are not a good standard to try to return to, but an egregious mistake that we must learn from. We must demand equal protection in full for preborn children.

With all of this said regarding the criminalization of abortion and equal protection for preborn children, it is important to note that we are not saying every single mother who has an abortion should be charged with first degree murder. Like all other criminal cases, mitigating circumstances will be taken into account and other legal defenses and immunities already in law apply. People who are coerced under threat of bodily harm to commit crimes already have legal defenses built into the law. These legal defenses and justifications will apply in defense of mothers coerced into having abortions. Mothers legitimately coerced into having abortion against their will must not and will not be charged in the death of their children.