Abolition Bills and the Death Penalty: Clearing up the confusion
Myth #1: Abolition bills require the death penalty for women who get abortions.
Myth #2: Abolition bills will prosecute women for past abortions.
This is absolutely false. This is not how any other Texas law works and abolition bills don’t operate this way either. It would be unjust for the same government that told someone abortion was legal to then turn around and prosecute them for it. Abolition bills are not retroactive and do not allow for prosecution of abortions committed prior to the effective date of the abolition bill.
Myth #3: Abolition bills single out women for punishment.
Abolition bills do not single anyone out. They simply remove the discriminatory, unconstitutional exemptions that prevent anyone involved in the killing of a preborn child from being equally subject to the laws.
Most Pro-Life bills, on the other hand, do single women out. Most Pro-Life bills ensure that no matter how brazen or premeditated a woman may be in aborting her child, no matter how many times she chooses to abort, and even if she violates existing Texas laws prohibiting her abortions, she may never be prosecuted in any way for her involvement in the death of her child.
Myth #4: Women who miscarry would be wrongfully imprisoned.
For a woman to be imprisoned at all would take the virtually unanimous agreement of the law enforcement officers investigating the death, the district attorney prosecuting the charges, the grand jury issuing the indictment, the judge and jury hearing evidence and issuing the verdict, the appellate courts reviewing the trial, and the governor reviewing the whole case.
The myth that passing an abolition bill would mean women would be locked up for having miscarriages is preposterous. Our justice system, while not perfect, has MANY fail-safe measures to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
Abolition bills do not create a whole new way for the justice system to handle cases. Abolition bills simply put cases with preborn victims into the same system we already trust to deal with the homicide of born persons.
A woman who has a miscarriage would be in no more danger of prosecution than someone who has an elderly family member pass away at home—much less so, in fact. Our existing justice system does not treat every death like a murder and abolition bills won’t change that.
Myth #5: Abolition bills violate a woman’s right.
No one, woman or man, has a “right” to murder an innocent human being.
The “right” to an abortion doesn’t exist in the U.S. Constitution. Legal experts don’t even argue that it does. They say instead that the “right” to an abortion is found in the penumbra of the Constitution. A penumbra is the fuzzy shadow behind a shadow. This is merely wordplay. Saying the “right” to an abortion is in the penumbra of the Constitution is just a fancy way of saying “it’s not in there.” You can read the entire Constitution 100 times and you will never find a Constitutional “right” to abortion.
More importantly, the Bible says, “You shall not murder.” God doesn’t give anyone the right to murder anyone else no matter how small or weak that person may be. God doesn’t make different rules about murder for women and men. The command to all is the same, “You shall not murder.”
Why do opponents of abolishing abortion perpetuate these myths?
The bottom-line is that many people just do not want equal protection for preborn children.
You may be surprised to learn that even many organizations, politicians, and lobbyists who identify as Pro-Life do not want legislation passed that establishes equal protection for ALL children in the womb.
At best, they’re suffering from born privilege.
Equal protection is not complicated. It simply means that we want the same laws that protect born people to also protect preborn people. Equal protection doesn’t create new laws or punishments just for abortion. It simply removes the discriminatory exemptions that keep our laws against homicide from protecting preborn people.
When people use “the death penalty 😱” as a scare tactic against abolition bills, it just means they want special protections for themselves that they DO NOT WANT extended to the weakest and most vulnerable Texans. Essentially they are saying there should be “laws to protect me but not thee.”
They want to use the specter of the maximum penalties allowed by law for a capital homicide charge to scare you away from equal protection. They want you to be horrified that anyone might face homicide charges for the premeditated killing of an innocent preborn child. Don’t be.
The Bible has a name for this kind of unequal lawmaking: partiality. And it says God hates it. Also, the U.S. Constitution prohibits it and says states may NOT deny persons the equal protection of the laws.
That means, if you agree that a fetus is a person, you have to support equal protection to be consistent.
So the first question to ask anyone using the death penalty as a smokescreen or scare tactic is: Do you believe that a fetus is a person?
How they answer will tell you a lot.