What about children who will be born into poverty or suffering?
Can you kill a born child because they are poor? No? Then you can’t kill a preborn child because they might turn out to be poor. Help the poor, certainly, but don’t murder them. Murder is only an appropriate answer to poverty or suffering if you’re a psychopath.
Do abolitionists support the use of birth control?
It largely depends on the method of birth control. Barrier methods such as condoms, diaphragms, or sponges which prevent the sperm from reaching the egg do not pose any risk of causing an abortion. All forms of hormonal birth control, on the other hand, pose a risk of causing an early abortion.
Hormonal birth control has three functions which serve to prevent pregnancy.
1) Stop ovulation from occurring.
2) Thicken cervical mucus so that sperm are not able to reach the egg.
3) Thin the lining of the uterus so that a newly conceived zygote is not able to implant in the uterus.
If 1 and 2 fail while 3 succeeds, an abortion is induced and a newly conceived human being dies. The frequency with which this occurs is not known precisely, but the total number is likely high given the widespread use of hormonal birth control.
Can You Come to My Campus/Town?
We are a small team of people located in central Oklahoma, and mainly just travel close by or do day-long activism trips. But we really want to encourage people like you to be doing the work of abolition on your own campus/in your own town.
First of all, check out the educational materials on our website and make sure you fully understand the differences between being an abolitionist and being pro-life.
Even if you don’t have any other Abolitionists around you that you know of, you can start spreading abolitionism by flyering cars in public parking lots with abolitionist materials like what we hand out on campus. This literature, t-shirts, and more are available in our online gear store. Flyering (or dropcarding) is walking from car to car to put a flyer under the driver-side windshield wiper, or sticking a dropcard in the driver-side window, held between the glass and the window gasket. In case anybody asks you, this is a federally protected first amendment activity in public parking lots.
To get connected with abolitionists near you, go to the main
page of our website and click on your state. At the bottom of your state’s individual page will be listed any abolitionists churches, groups, or organizations that signed onto the Norman Statement, which is the doctrinal statement of today’s Abolitionist Movement.
What about rape and incest?
Rape is a terrible crime. It should be a capital crime. For some reason, the secular culture is not willing to go this far. Those who commit this heinous act should face swift justice and victims of rape should receive the support of their families and communities. But it is insane and evil to murder a child for the sins of the father.
The argument for murdering babies conceived in incest is pure eugenics. That a child has a higher likelihood of having certain disabilities does not mean we should murder them.
You can’t legislate morality, right?
You can ONLY legislate morality. Every law legislates based on someone’s view of morality. Every law is an instance of those in power establishing what citizens must not do because it is wrong. Speed limit laws are based on the immorality of risking your life and that of others. Child support laws are based on the immorality of a father leaving his family. Laws are inescapably moral. The question is not whether morality will be legislated but whose morality will be legislated? In the case of abortion, the question is will pro-child sacrifice people or anti-child sacrifice people be writing the laws?
If abortion is criminalized, won’t it just happen in less safe ways, unsafely?
If abortion is criminalized as murder, there will be far fewer abortions. Many expecting couples will not risk murder charges, and many other couples will be more sexually responsible and not make babies until they are prepared for babies.
But there certainly will be some who risk murder charges and get the abortion anyway. How do we know that? Because killing born people results in murder charges and people still do it. There will be men and women who violate the law possibly in back alley-type abortions. That is not the fault of people who believe that murder should be illegal and that all humans have rights. It is fault of people pursuing abortions in back-alleys.
What if someone isn’t going to grow up to be a contributing member of society?
Don’t be a psychopath. You don’t murder people because they might grow up to be unproductive.
How would ectopic pregnancies be handled under an abolition law?
Abolition bills mandate that preborn children be treated as equal human beings. This means they cannot be simply killed, but it also does not mean that a potentially life-threatening situation like ectopic pregnancy can’t be treated. An abolition bill like OK SB1729 establishes that “This chapter shall not apply to…the undertaking of life-saving procedures to save the life of the mother when accompanied by reasonable steps to save the life of the unborn child.” This means that doctors can and should treat ectopic pregnancies, but should also attempt, to the best of their ability to save the life of the unborn child. See our blog: “Examining Ectopic Pregnancy Treatments From An Abolitionist Perspective” for more details and what this would look like practically.
Under an abolition law, would ever single aborting mother be charged with 1st degree murder?
No. An abolition bill simply makes preborn children equal under law. So all the immunities, justifications, and mitigating factors considered in all other criminal cases would also be considered when charging and trying people for abortion. Each instance would be considered on a case-by-case basis based on the facts of each case. Some men and women would get charged with first degree murder. Some would get charged with third degree murder or manslaughter. Some would not be charged at all, such as those women being coerced. It all depends on the facts of the case.
Was Dobbs a step in the right direction?
The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, essentially turning over the responsibility for abortion policy to the state governments and to Congress.
But in order to say that the States and Congress can write whatever abortion policy they want, you have to deny that the preborn child is a person. If the preborn child was a person, the Constitution mandates that they receive the rights to life and the equal protection of the law. In Dobbs, the Court ought to have recognized the humanity of preborn children and ordered that their rights be protected. The conference presentation to the right explains this in detail.
But, one might say, at least the states are now free to abolish abortion if they want to. The problem with this sentiment is that the states were always free to write whatever abortion sentiment they wanted to. From the get-go, Roe was an obvious violation of the Constitution and was therefore not binding on the states. Abolition bills prior to Dobbs contained nullification clauses directing state officials to ignore Roe and any subsequent similar court opinions.
If I had an abortion prior to the passage of an abolition law, will I go to jail?
No. Every abolition bill applies only to crimes committed after the passage of the bill. OK SB1729, for instance, says “This act is prospective only and shall not apply to conduct committed prior to the effective date of this act.” This is consistent with American law which prohibits ex-post facto prosecution.
Why do you call yourselves abolitionists instead of pro-life?
The leaders of the Pro-Life Movement are the enemies of justice for preborn children. They have opposed abolition bills and abolitionism at every turn. They believe mothers should be free to have self-managed abortion with impunity. They teach heterodox beliefs and strategies which blatantly violate God’s Word. It is necessary to distinguish one’s self from them. It is necessary to draw a clear line between their unbiblical beliefs and our Biblical ones. Language is an important part of that.
The pro-life groups know that differentiation between us and them is key to the growth of the Abolitionist Movement and that’s why they often steal our language and pass themselves off as abolitionists. They don’t want us to be able to create a clear, category distinction between us and them. This is a clear lesson to abolitionists about the importance of linguistic differentiation.
What about bodily autonomy? What about my body, my choice?
The body inside a pregnant mother’s body is not her body. Bodily autonomy is not an absolute license to use one’s body in any way they choose. Specific to this case, you cannot use your body or the idea of bodily freedom to intentionally kill an innocent human being.
Isn’t consciousness what makes us valuable?
Some people will acknowledge the humanity of a human embryo but will argue that they are not worthy of protection until they have consciousness or sentience. Such people reject the notion of human rights. They believe that only a special class of humans have value. They are bigots, no different than those that perpetrated the holocaust and race-based chattel slavery.
The image of God in human beings is where we get our objective value, and we all bear the image of God equally. We thus have equal value and are equally deserving of the protection of the laws. The view that value derives from consciousness would result in those who with greater cognitive capabilities and consciousness being of more value than others. Putting human value on a sliding scale like that will always end in a atrocities.
Since not everyone is a Christian, shouldn’t we argue against abortion from a secular perspective?
We aren’t as interested in personal opinions as we are with objective truth, and the only objective standard of truth is God’s revelation to man. An atheist can have a personal opinion that abortion is good or bad, but he cannot ground his opinion in anything objective.
As William Lloyd Garrison wrote, “Take away the Bible, and our warfare with oppression, and infidelity, and intemperance, and impurity, and crime, is at an end: our weapons are wrested away—our foundation is removed—we have no authority to speak, and no courage to act.”
God, the transcendent source of all morality, is the only standard by which evils like abortion can be adequately rebuked. The Holy Spirit is the only one who can open the eyes of the wicked abortion supporters who do not have an intellectual problem but a moral one.
Wouldn’t an abolition bill outlaw miscarriage treatment?
Miscarriage and abortion are two completely different things. Heartless, psychopathic abortion supporters have worked to linguistically and legally link miscarriage and abortion so that they can scare people into believing that abortion bans outlaw miscarriage treatment. It’s no surprise that murderers are also liars. No abortion ban ever written would outlaw the removing of a deceased fetus from the uterus. OK SB1729, for instance, has language establishing that “This chapter shall not apply to…a spontaneous miscarriage.”