When We Say Abortion is Murder

Words Matter

When we say abortion is murder, healthcare providers get threatened, stalked, assaulted. Clinics get bombed; doctors get gunned down in their churches. A door opens, just a crack at first, where we consider that, if abortion is indeed murder, then someone should be charged, convicted, and sentenced. Someone, maybe multiple people, must pay. Some with their lives.

Charlie Riedel / AP

In several states, abortion providers face felony charges with prison sentences ranging from up to one year in prison to 10 to 15 years, depending on the state. Texas, whose SB-8 law banned abortion after six weeks and went into effect September 1, 2021—the very impetus for me beginning this newsletter—has now, one year later, passed a total ban on abortion, with a felony charge and up to life in prison for the doctor if the abortion was successful, which, for Texas legislators, means the “unborn child” has died. The idea of charging doctors and healthcare workers feels unconscionable to me, unthinkable, and totally anathema to the way society—and healthcare—are supposed to work.

Charging women or girls for their abortions, however, has been rare. Anti-abortion groups have suggested that while doctors should perhaps be charged or face some penalty for providing abortions, women who get abortions should be considered victims. But the crack in the door might be widening to allow women to be charged too. Some people would like to see it happen.

Photo by Bobby Ross Jr.

The incendiary language of saying abortion is murder turns potentially reasonable people into unwavering zealots. It’s a message repeated again and again by pastors and priests. The Archdiocese of Baltimore, for instance, published this on their website:

“No matter how one looks at it, abortion is murder….The DNA of an embryo indicates that the embryo is a person. To aid a person who engages in abortion or promotes abortion makes one an accessory to murder.

Our faith teaches us that murder is a grave sin and that one who approves of anyone’s murder and promotes murder also commits a grave sin. We now have politicians who approve of and support abortion, the murder of the defenseless child. How can we say that voting for such politicians is not grave sin?

We need to keep all this in mind when we come to vote in November.”

That seemingly timely post wasn’t recent. It was from a decade ago.

No, the rhetoric isn’t new, but the wide-scale adoption of this hardcore position is. Recently, states that have banned abortion as soon as six weeks—or even entirely from conception—are including “personhood” language in their abortion laws. The embryo is a person, the Church argue, and as states adopt personhood language into their laws that ban or restrict abortion, the argument that abortion is murder becomes more tenable, opening the door even more for more punitive measures or even a national ban on abortion.

I would have scoffed at that notion a few years ago. But imagine THIS Supreme Court hearing the case that would determine whether states that still provide safe and legal abortions could continue to do so if embryos and fetuses have gained personhood status. The fertilized egg could be protected under the Fourteenth Amendment—the same amendment that protected a woman’s right to abortion for 50 years. I mean, would this current Supreme Court continue to allow murder in New Mexico even though it had been banned in Texas?

Herein lies the problem: The abortion-is-murder claim mutes all attempts at finding a reasonable compromise; it creates an all-or-nothing, either-or situation. You cannot protect both the woman and the fetus, the claim announces. You have to choose.

And if you make the claim that abortion is murder, you need to follow through in your logic to the logical conclusion. What do we do to murderers? We accuse them, convict them, imprison them for a long time, sometimes give them the death penalty. My friend’s son, whom I’ve watched grow up and adore, carried an Abortion is Murder sign as a counter-protester at the abortion rights protest at our high school, something I’ve mentioned before in my newsletter. Now I want to ask him: What does it mean for you when you say abortion is murder? He’s a smart kid. I want to ask him if he knows that one in four women will have an abortion in their lifetimes. I want to tell him that that means he knows many, many women who have had abortions, whether he realizes it or not. I want to tell him that I am one of them. I want to know what he would think of these women, these murderers, and what he thinks should happen to them—to me. Would it be enough for us to repent? To ask forgiveness? To confess? Or would he say that we should have to pay—more than we already have?

And if so, what would that look like?

The Archdiocese of Baltimore is of course, like all Catholic dioceses, an arbiter of morality. They tell us how to live moral lives. They tell us which of our actions constitute sin. Certainly, the cycle of abuse from Catholic priests sexually abusing children should not take away from their message about abortion. In researching the Baltimore Archdiocese after I found the abortion condemnation, I came across a Wikipedia page about a priest, Anthony Joseph Maskell, who served as a counselor there from 1965 to 1994—nearly 30 years—and who was “removed from the ministry because of sexual abuse toward female students at Archbishop Keough High School between 1969 and 1975.” A Netflix documentary about him suggests he may have been guilty of far more than sexual abuse. (I don’t watch much TV and have not seen this, but the 1,000+ comments on the trailer speak to its brilliance, darkness, emotion, i.e., “This one of the most touching, well made, pieces of media created by Netflix. The amount of research and care put into this is jaw dropping.”) But I don’t want resort to red herring or ad hominem—I’m not trying to divert attention away from the argument; I’m just noting the hypocrisy. The terrible, blatant, damning hypocrisy from these paragons of righteousness.

Sin is one thing: After all, if you believe in sin, you would agree that we all sin. But the accusation of murder connotes more than sin, so much so that, if you also believe the Bible’s recommendation of an eye for an eye, then you might say that a woman who has an abortion should lose her freedom—that she should serve a substantial prison term. But an eye for an eye might mean more for you; it might mean that, by having an abortion and thus murdering an innocent child, she might deserve the death penalty.

That’s crazy, right?

That would never happen, right?

A bill in Louisiana that would have subjected women to homicide charges for having abortions failed this past May. The vote was 65-26. But that means that 26 legislators were willing to move forward with the bill.

In a recent podcast from The Daily, “The Effort to Punish Women for Having Abortions,” reporter Elizabeth Dias explains the faction of the anti-abortion movement called “abolitionists”: “They say that if life begins at conception, and abortion is murder, then that is how it should be seen in the law. So they want to categorize abortion from conception, literally, as homicide, under the law.”

She interviews an abortion abolitionist man named Jeff Durbin, an ex-drug addict who got clean with Christianity. He started a church, Apologia Church in Arizona, which has a congregation of about 700 people; he also started an organization called End Abortion Now and runs a production studio with online abolitionist programming. Dias also interviews a woman named Christine who works for Durbin’s church. Christine tells Dias that she had an abortion and disagrees with what she calls the “pro-life industry” that refers to women who have abortions as victims:

Christine: I am not a victim. Like, who is it who has told a female I’m a victim? I’m not a victim. I would say my sin. We can call it what it is to be very true about it — I was a sinner. You know? Sexual immorality, you know, sex outside of marriage, murder.

Elizabeth Dias: Murder?

Christine: Murder. Well, if you’re killing a baby, get an abortion, then the murder. So, but… it haunts you. It changes you. And I wish I could go back but I can’t. But I will do anything I can now just, yeah. And I, you know, I saw my sin. I’m so sorry. It’s something that will never ever leave you. And you can’t take it. You can’t lie in those moments. You think, I can’t do this. I can’t do this, you know, have a baby and you do choose death. You choose to murder. You don’t think of it as murder, but it is. It is. It’s a life and you just push it under the ground. And it will never leave you and it will come up.

For me — and I’ll only speak for me — it was a baby. And that’s the part of me that I can never go back that I chose to kill. So that’s why it haunts. It’s I did wrong, that was — Yeah.

Dias: Well, is it — what do you make of the punishment for a woman? And what punishment should this state give out?

Christine: What — give out? You’re asking me?

Dias: Yeah.

Christine: Well, how do I feel about it? I feel it is extremely just and it’s biblical and it’s fair. It’s an equal measure. I took a life. I should give my life. If they were to come back and I would, right now, absolutely, would go to court and say, yeah, I’m a sinner. I did it. And if that was my punishment, I would take it. If that was my punishment, I would take it.

Christine has convinced herself that not only has she sinned by having an abortion, but that, if called to—if forced by law, she would be willing to have her own life taken for that sin. She would submit to the death penalty. She would deserve it for what she had done.

It’s not just words. Words lead to action, sometimes punitive action. Donald Trump suggested there should be some punishment for women who have abortions (and then put three justices on the Supreme Court who would solidify the overturning of Roe). Former Idaho Senator Bob Nonino, who ran for lieutenant governor of Idaho in 2018 and lost, said during his campaign that abortion was murder and suggested that giving women the death penalty might deter them from getting abortions. The other Republican candidates in that election agreed with Nonino that abortion is murder but wouldn’t go so far on as to support a murder charge. One of them—Janice McGeachin—became lieutenant governor. Now Idaho, just a few days ago, joined 10 other states that ban abortion from conception. In May, according to ABC News, McGeachin, who is running for governor, “demanded that Republican Gov. Brad Little call a special legislative session to eliminate rape and incest as legal exceptions to Idaho’s abortion law.” McGeachin, who is endorsed former President Trump, said:

“It is shameful that Idaho’s abortion laws are not the most pro-life in our country. No child should ever be murdered because of the circumstances surrounding his or her conception.”

I hear in her words the door creaking open just a little more. Sounds like her position might be shifting toward that murder charge. The rhetoric is ramping up.

It’s hard to backtrack from making the claim that abortion is murder. What potential is there for a person to soften their views after that? Reason is out the door. Any chance of finding common ground or compromise is lost. Civility disappears. Basically, all meaningful, intellectual, philosophical, and yes, ethical debate disappears into the ether when you simply parrot that abortion is murder.

Some people who once leaned more toward a pro-choice stance are adopting the abortion-is-murder rhetoric. Mehmet Oz, aka Dr. Oz, is the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania. He, “as recently as 2019…said he was really worried about the harmful consequences for women’s health if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.” Now he claims that life starts at conception and that abortion is murder—at any stage of the pregnancy.

One of the most interesting articles I’ve read about the history of abortion is murder argument comes from Neelam Patel, writing for the Georgetown Journal of Gender and Law. Her article, “The Insidious Origins of the “Moral” Argument Against Abortion Rights” outlines the history of abortion in the United States and discusses how abortion and birth went from being something women helped other women with to being something reserved solely for physicians, who in the 1800s were all men.

As Patel points out, in England and the United States until the mid-1800s, common law regarded abortion legal until, ahem, THE QUICKENING, which refers to the first time the mother feels fetal movement, typically around four months). But in 1847, the American Medical Association—the AMA—was founded, and “became staunchly and publicly opposed to abortion rights” with Horatio Storer, leading the charge. Storer, a physician, wrote an essay titled “Why Not? A Book for Every Woman,” which the AMA rewarded a prize for the “best short and comprehensive tract” for females, “designed to enlighten them upon the criminality and physical evils of forced abortion.” Storer, Patel tells us, became one of the most “prominent advocates for making abortion completely illegal, citing the inherent moral failing of the women he claimed were ‘murdering their children by thousands.’”

The American Medical Association, unlike the Horatio Storers of the world, eventually made a full about-face. In fact, on June 24, 2022, the president of the AMA released this powerful statement:

“The American Medical Association is deeply disturbed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn nearly a half century of precedent protecting patients’ right to critical reproductive health care—representing an egregious allowance of government intrusion into the medical examination room, a direct attack on the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship, and a brazen violation of patients’ rights to evidence-based reproductive health services. States that end legal abortion will not end abortion—they will end safe abortion, risking devastating consequences, including patients’ lives.

Today’s opinion shifting reproductive health decision-making to lawmakers opens a deep political rift between states over access to reproductive health services that places sound medical practice and the health of patients at risk. State restrictions that intrude on the practice of medicine and interfere with the patient-physician relationship leave millions with little or no access to reproductive health services while criminalizing medical care.

Access to legal reproductive care will be limited to those with the sufficient resources, circumstances, and financial means to do so—exacerbating health inequities by placing the heaviest burden on patients from Black, Latinx, Indigenous, low-income, rural, and other historically disadvantaged communities who already face numerous structural and systemic barriers to accessing health care….

As the health of millions of patients hangs in the balance, this is a fight we will not give up.”

On the day Roe v. Wade was overturned, I was so angry and upset that I recorded a video about an abortion I had at 16, a video I have yet to rewatch. In it, I talk about a former teacher who offered to mentor me, and how instead I became pregnant by him. He had not wanted me to have an abortion, and yet knew we knew I had to have one. He was Catholic, and though we did not go to church together or go out in public very much, one day he took me to a beautiful church in downtown Los Angeles, which I think was Cathedral of our Lady of Angels.

We went in and sat down in one of the pews. I was not Catholic, but had some understanding of the rituals of mass from the five terrible years we’d lived with my mom’s Catholic boyfriend. But on this particular day, instead of the priest giving mass, he introduced a speaker. This person stood at the pulpit and for more than an hour—indeed, it felt like eternity—spoke of abortion as murder.

I remember being baffled. What an incredible coincidence, I thought, as I had just had an abortion. I was too naïve to realize my former teacher had taken me there intentionally, to punish us both, though really, it was my mostly my punishment, as it was my body and my abortion. But was I a murderer? I was the age of my son Diego and in the grade—10th—of my son Charlie. My grades plummeted so badly through the rest of 10th grade and throughout 11th grade that I would not be able to attend a four-year university straight out of high school. However, had I not had the abortion, I’m not sure I would have survived high school at all. I suppose you could say I sacrificed a life—or the potential for life—to save my own.

This summer I took my mother and son Charlie to my brother’s house in La Quinta to celebrate my mom’s 76th birthday. My brother’s two college-aged sons were there too. We all went to a drag show—my brother’s idea—and my mom loved it; we all did.

Afterward, my brother and I hung out in the pool drinking Coors Light till midnight. We were telling stories about our childhood, so vastly different than the upbringing we’d been able to offer our own kids. Our boys were listening as we reminisced. The conversation turned to the teacher, my pregnancy, and the abortion. My brother converted to Catholicism in his early twenties and had raised his sons as Catholics.

In an earlier newsletter titled Civil War, I’d written about my frustration with my brother for things he posted on social media after Roe v. Wade was overturned—stuff meant to taunt. But sitting in that pool with him and our boys late at night, the air temp still registering more than 100 degrees, he looked at me and said,

“Do you remember who took you to the clinic?”

Oddly, I could not. I racked my brain. Was it the teacher? My mother?

“It was me,” my brother said. “I drove you there, I waited, and then I drove you home.”

It turned out my brother was there for me at a moment when I’d really needed him. It had been many, many years, but I finally got to officially thank him. His boys had heard everything. They didn’t treat me any differently the next day, and we haven’t talked about it, but they heard.

As I thought about it, I realized that instead of taking me to the clinic, my former teacher took me to a place that espouses a certain morality whilst being notorious for sheltering clergymen who take sexual advantage of children, and that there they had told me that it was I who committed a great sin, that by having an abortion, I had committed murder.

And yet I did not regret my abortion; I was, in fact, grateful beyond belief for it and the nurses and doctor who provided it. As journalist Irin Carmon points out in her article “Can You Change Her Choice” (a Salon.com article we used to read in my argument class):  

“What's striking in all of this is how the moral argument against abortion alone—that it is murder of an innocent life—made by a highly organized movement for decades, including in ever-proliferating crisis pregnancy centers, has failed to persuade so many women.”

Women and girls will have abortions. They will have abortions whether the procedure is legal or illegal, safe or unsafe. They will find ways to end their pregnancies whether they are called murderers or not.

Church leaders, parishioners, and legislators in some states, taking this an extreme, radical, uncompromising, and controlling position, have gone so far as to say that there should be no exceptions for rape or incest—a position I consider patriarchal, sexist, misogynistic, and cruel. Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Missouri have all banned abortion with no exception for rape or incest. Mississippi has banned abortion with exceptions for rape but not incest. Oklahoma has banned abortion from fertilization. Idaho, Tennessee, and Texas have adopted near-total bans. More bans are coming—some are held up in court.

The frightening thing is that the abortion-is-murder argument is no longer solely a moral one; it’s blurring the lines between separation of church and state and criminalizing a procedure that was legal for 50 years. Where will we draw the line? Or is the line also disappearing?

Anti-abortion groups are celebrating. Abolitionists want even more. The door swings wider still.

I’m not a fearful person; but I find myself fearing for the future—a future that for some is already here.

Thanks for reading.