by Gregg Cunningham

CBR strongly believes that a post-abortive woman is abortion’s second victim, and that abortion already punishes women with tragic severity without ever prosecuting them.

We understand experientially that every woman who aborts knows that what she is doing is wrong, but few understand how wrong.  The humanity of the child is systematically hidden from her by society.  The inhumanity of abortion is methodically hidden from her by society.  Women are lied to about prenatal development and abortion by their teachers, the press, and the entire medical establishment.  The pro-life movement and even the church have unwittingly conspired with Planned Parenthood to hide the horror of abortion.

We allow them to be lied to and then some would punish them for believing the lie?  Where is the love in that betrayal?

Countless pregnant women have told us they have changed their minds about “pregnancy termination” when shown the inexpressible evil of abortion.  Countless post-abortive women have told us they would have never aborted had someone shown them that truth before instead of after they aborted.

The Centers For Disease Control report that nearly half of all abortions are performed on women who have already had one or more previous abortion.  Post-abortive women are among those most at risk of aborting, and are, therefore, among those in greatest need of seeing our deeply disturbing abortion photos – lest they do it again!

These women are not without fault, but it is moral fault, not criminal fault.  The remedy is spiritual, not penal.  They are often panic-stricken.  Many are being coerced by threats of abandonment made by boyfriends, fathers, husbands, etc., who say “This pregnancy will ruin your life!”  What they really mean is “This pregnancy will ruin my life!”

It is, thankfully, impossibly unlikely that the public (even the pro-life public) would support the enactment of criminal penalties regarding post-abortive women.  The mere attempt to enact such legislation would forever discredit our movement.

The enactment of such an insensitive penalty would merely be a pyrrhic victory for the most vindictive among us, because police would virtually never be willing to arrest post-abortive women; prosecutors wouldn’t charge them; juries wouldn’t convict them; and judges wouldn’t imprison them.

Society has already entered into a period of shocking lawlessness when authorities are refusing to enforce enormous numbers of laws.  All that would result from the futile prosecutions of post-abortive women would be a black eye for pro-lifers whose lack of compassion would confirm the accusations that we are misogynous bullies who hypocritically claim to care about the suffering of post-abortive women and then brutalize them as savagely as the abortion industry.

Gregg Cunningham is the Executive Director of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) and a frequent contributor to FAB.