Just 10 years before my friend Kathryn was born, her mother tragically chose to have an abortion. When she later conceived Kathryn, she told her husband, “I felt a soul enter my body.”
I recently learned at my Senate District convention that some groups in Texas are pushing to criminalize obtaining an abortion with the same penalties as murder, including life in prison or even the death penalty. Had that been the law, Kathryn almost certainly would never have been born.
As a pro-lifer who believes every unborn child is a distinct human being deserving full protection, I am convinced we must reject these extreme measures that would treat desperate mothers as murderers.
The Moral and Scientific Case
As a Christian, I believe that life begins at conception. Therefore, I believe each abortion intentionally ends an innocent human life. As Tertullian wrote in the second century, “To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-kill.”
Science confirms this view. Leading medical textbooks, such as Keith L. Moore and T.V.N. Persaud’s, “The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology,” state clearly that, “Human development begins at fertilization…A zygote is the beginning of a new human being.” In a major 2021 survey by University of Chicago researcher Steven Andrew Jacobs, 96% of biologists agreed that human life begins at fertilization
The abortion industry, cynically seeking to perpetuate itself, preys on desperate women, making them secondary victims of the abortion of their unborn children.
Criminalizing Women is Wrong
Historically, even when abortion was illegal before Roe v. Wade, criminal penalties targeted abortionists, not the women themselves. After Dobbs, more than 27 states wisely continued this tradition by explicitly exempting mothers from prosecution.
Texas law currently takes this approach. Proposals from groups like Abolish Abortion would remove these protections, treating women the same as abortionists under homicide statutes. While these groups claim prosecutors would use discretion, there is nothing preventing an overzealous prosecutor from charging a vulnerable woman with first-degree homicide.
This approach is both impractical and uncompassionate. No woman is going to report her own abortion to the police or testify against herself. Such laws would only drive abortions underground or out of state and discourage women from seeking help at pregnancy resource centers. Mainstream pro-life organizations, including National Right to Life, Texas Alliance for Life, and Americans United for Life, strongly oppose criminalizing mothers for these very reasons.
Jailing or executing a scared mother does not save her baby and contradicts the pro-life ethic of compassion.
A Better Way: Support Over Punishment
Instead, we should expand what works. More than 2,700 pregnancy resource centers across America provide free ultrasounds, counseling, material support, and hope, and they outnumber abortion facilities. Research from the Charlotte Lozier Institute shows that these centers have helped save 800,000 unborn lives in recent years.
Policy makers can do more by supporting pro-natalist policies, such as adoption reform, fully funding safe haven sites, and increasing public awareness of them. These positive, life-affirming measures, paired with strong accountability for abortion providers, reduce abortions far more effectively than punishing mothers ever could.
We can, and should be, uncompromisingly pro-life. Protecting the most vulnerable does not require treating their mothers as criminals. By holding abortion providers accountable while surrounding women in crisis with compassion and practical support, we build a culture that values both lives. That is the authentically pro-life path.