Should Mothers be Prosecuted for Their Abortion?
Following the recent evocative legislation in Alabama and Georgia, talks within Christian and conservative circles have consistently brought up a contentious question within the abortion debate, “Should mothers be prosecuted for their abortion?” This is a tough one.
It is difficult to respond to this question without being accused of speaking from a position of disconnect. I am, after all, a male who cannot (personally) relate to the life-altering experience of pregnancy and motherhood. We are all, however, able to speak on the issues. We all have the ability to assess and label wrongdoing where we see it.
First, from a pro-life perspective, would we say that a woman who has sought and received an abortion has committed a crime? Second, would we then say that if she has committed a crime that punishment is necessary? Would we go so far as to assert that this woman would need to be arrested and tried for murder? This is a series of questions that needs serious but compassionate consideration.
The discussion on criminality is a puzzle with at least three pieces: prosecution for aborting mothers, the support and healthcare of women, and the education of our culture.
Prosecution
If a mother of a born child is found to have even mishandled or mistreated her child, she is criminally prosecuted for neglect or abuse. Andrea Yates was at first found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison after she fatally drowned her five children in 2001. The difference between killing a birthed child and a fetus, say pro-lifers, is negligible. Why then would we dismiss the charge and prosecution of an expectant mother who sought to kill her unborn child? Omitting rape or incest from this discussion, there should be no double standard when speaking of intentionally taking a life. Though not a popular position, it is becoming more evident to more people that if abortion is murder, then those who solicit abortions should be prosecuted.
The question, then, is finding an appropriate punishment for those charged with soliciting an abortion, assuming in this hypothetical, that it has already been made illegal. I can’t speak toward the struggles and stress that women go through when finding out they’re pregnant. I can’t pretend to know the physical and emotional pain of pregnancy and the nearly one-quarter of women who face depression during this time. What I can do is take these all-too-tangible realities into consideration when discussing criminality.
What would an appropriate charge be? One of at least two answers must be considered. The first is the charge of manslaughter.
Involuntary manslaughter is what you are charged with, for example, when you inadvertently take someone’s life while driving otherwise lawfully. Voluntary manslaughter would be the intentional act of killing when a person is driven to emotional duress or instability.
It would follow that if seeking an abortion, whether you personally define a fetus as a life or not, your actions are not involuntary, so that would rule out involuntary manslaughter. Leaving voluntary, this type can be broken down into three areas; two of which are applicable: heat of passion and diminished capacity.
It could very well be argued that a woman who learns she is pregnant or is in the midst of early pregnancy could be in one of these two states of mind. After all, it is an incredibly stressful time. A woman could absolutely be agitated enough to march to a Planned Parenthood immediately after discovering her EPT result. The result would be the provocative event necessary for the heat-of-passion-type offense.
Similarly, she could also be suffering from the emotional burden of pregnancy-related depression, as mentioned above, putting her in an altered state of sanity than she otherwise would not be within. In this case, she would probably not necessarily be acting maliciously towards her unborn child, but merely responding irrationally and emotionally to a problem that is affecting her life significantly. These conditions would have to be taken into consideration when sentencing.
Either of these conditions might be appropriate for the charge of manslaughter, assuming a woman was in an altered state of mind. The penalty for manslaughter in the U.S. is generally up to 10 years and/or a $10,000 fine.
The second and more difficult, but arguably more applicable charge that might be brought against an aborting mother is Solicitation to Commit Murder. We all know what this is; this is hiring a “hitman” to kill someone. It is logical that, whether you personally believe a fetus is a life or not, if the law gives a fetus personhood and an abortion is performed on it, the aborting actor is guilty of murder according to the law.
An expectant mother, seeking an abortion, takes the same intentional, ultimate steps as one soliciting a hit. In this case, though, the assassin is not in a hooded sweatshirt wielding a knife, but in a lab coat, using an abortion aspirator. In this case, if abortion is already illegal, the doctor would already be in violation of the law by performing this procedure. The legislation in Alabama already provides steep penalties for doctors who perform abortions outside of a strict set of guidelines. Kermit Gosnell’s sentences would be an apt example (although he committed his crimes in Pennsylvania); he was convicted of first-degree murder for his infanticide.
Furthermore, with the constant publicization of abortion laws and decisions in our culture and media, it would be incomprehensible that a woman was not aware of the law on the matter, and would therefore be held responsible for the solicitation. Even if one weren’t in-the-know of the current law, “ignorance of the law excuses not.”
The punishment in the U.S. for Solicitation to Commit Murder varies by the result of the hit; ten years in prison for the act itself, and up to life in prison or the death penalty if the solicitation resulted in a death (the charge also can include up to a quarter-million dollar fine). Whether the severity of this particular punishment is appropriate for an aborting mother is another conversation.
Between manslaughter and solicitation of murder, the middle ground falls somewhere between a great fine and several years in prison. The appropriate punishment for abortion within these charges would ideally be defined state-to-state and determined by a judge.
It is possible that another law or set of laws defining punishment for aborting mothers is the best solution. It’s possible that a severe, federal punishment for an action that was recently near-“free and on-demand” is untenable. My personal suggestion would be that the law(s) are built on a sliding scale, with an expiration date. As in, while abortion transitions from being a “woman’s choice” to “felony murder” within the legislation and culture, the laws respond accordingly, in-time.
The proposed law might originally state that the penalty is $10,000 and/or a year in prison. In the course of 10 years, after the public has changed its thinking on the issue and the precedent of the law in the minds of the public has become commonplace, that law then expires in favor of a steeper penalty—one that is more in accordance with our current manslaughter or solicitation of murder laws.
Support
The puzzle piece that makes the discussion of criminal punishment more palatable among centrists, leftists, and conservatives alike would be support. Pro-choicers are constantly calling for support for pre- and post-natal women, serving “uncompassionate” conservatives with the responsibility of answering that call. The answer may be a compromise in the left and right positions.
If abortion were made illegal, then much of the federal support going to abortion clinics would be freed-up to utilize elsewhere. Public funding makes up around 40% of Planned Parenthood’s budget, about $500 million annually. This money should be diverted into actual, effective healthcare provision for women, in lieu of typical Planned Parenthood abortion services.
If this pre-marked funding were opened up, fiscal conservatives like myself might be willing to negotiate to provide women free or subsidized contraceptives, feminine care products, or STD testing.
It might finally be tenable to the American public to subsidize all natal healthcare to women if abortion were made illegal—a more-than-reasonable trade. If this were the case, I feel many conservatives like myself would be willing to publicly fund treatment for all expectant mothers through clinics like Planned Parenthood for the less-common services they provide; bloodwork and testing, mammograms, and sonograms.
A fair idea might be to also provide one to six months of newborn essentials to those in low-income households; baby food, diapers, and wipes, etc. Another change worth pursuing in legislation is a stricter child-support mandate placed upon the unwed fathers of unborn children, as well as harsher penalties for fathers that abandon these obligations. Other areas we need to funnel resources into would be adoption services, mental health and depression services, and pre- and post-natal counseling organizations and support groups.
While the above suggestions could be construed as traditionally socialist, negotiation and bipartisanship for the cause of life are necessary and worth constructing. In fact, if any is in favor of the pro-life position, truly valuing human life, there are a number of other major social issues in which they should be willing to negotiate on in order to stop the mass termination of lives, including many that conservatives would typically staunchly oppose.
Education
The education I’m speaking of isn’t K-12, although that’s where it starts. The education that needs to take place in our fellowship with one another is a re-education of culture; the redefining of culture that restores Judeo-Christian values and reassigns humanity to unborn humans. Education in the science of human development is necessary in the schools, and education in the value of human life is necessary in the cultural discourse.
We need to take the time to educate each other on the underlying compassion in our positions and the real-life struggles that we all face—emphasis on the burden and sacrifice of pregnant mothers. We also need to give women the authority and agency they deserve in recognizing that they are cognizant of the consequences of their decisions; that they will be held temporally and eternally accountable for their actions in the relationship of sex and the formation of a life.
It is in these ways that we can begin to come together and celebrate the inherent value in something without parity on Earth, human life.