Prosecuting Women Won’t End Abortion

I remember sitting in the waiting room at Planned Parenthood, hands folded in my lap, telling myself I had no other choice.

I was afraid and alone. It was the kind of fear that makes you feel lonely even in a crowded room. I had walked in that day fully intending to go through with an abortion. When they called my name, I got up and walked out the door instead. I still cannot fully explain what happened at that moment, but more than 30 years later, I am beyond grateful that I left.

That experience is why I feel compelled to speak plainly to my fellow pro-life believers about something I think we are getting badly wrong: the push to prosecute women who seek abortions.

We cannot win the argument for life by making criminals of the women we are trying to help. That approach does not protect children. It will harden hearts against our movement and push vulnerable women further from the support they need.

Public policy must be grounded in the reality of who these women actually are. Research consistently shows that most women who seek abortions report doing so under pressure—whether from partners, family members, financial crises, or some combination of all three—and that many say they would have continued the pregnancy if they had more support.

I was one of those women. The difference in my case was a grandmother who refused to let me feel alone.

Criminalizing women who have abortions in these circumstances does not address any of that. It punishes people who are already in crisis while doing nothing about the conditions that drove them there.

Consider, too, the practical consequences that I do not think advocates for this approach have fully considered. Today, the majority of abortions in this country are drug-induced abortions rather than surgical procedures. This matters because abortion pill reversal is possible. If a woman acts quickly after taking the first pill, there is a chance to intervene and save the pregnancy.

But if we classify abortion as homicide and expose women to prosecution, a woman who has second thoughts after swallowing that first pill may be too frightened to call anyone. She will not reach out to a pro-life pregnancy center. She will not try reversal. She will go silent, and that baby will be lost.

The same fear could prevent women from seeking emergency medical care if complications arise. In trying to hold women accountable, we may end up costing lives we could have saved.

The same logic applies to the network of pregnancy resource centers, maternity homes, and adoption agencies that form the backbone of the pro-life movement’s real work. These organizations depend on trust. Women come through their doors in their most uncertain moments, often still deciding what to do. If seeking that help could later be used against them in a criminal proceeding, many women will not come at all. We would be dismantling the very infrastructure that saves lives.

Beyond that, there is the practical matter of whether such laws can even function. Criminal statutes require consistent enforcement, and most prosecutors across the country have already said they will not pursue cases against women. Public opinion is similarly resistant. A law that cannot be enforced and lacks public legitimacy does not end abortion. It only creates the appearance of action while delivering nothing.

There is a better way, and we already know what it looks like.

All of us in this movement share the same goal: a world where abortion is unthinkable. We get there by understanding and supporting pregnant women in difficult circumstances.

Concretely, that means expanding material support, funding pregnancy centers, and building the kind of community networks where a frightened woman can find a voice like my grandmother’s before she ever walks through the wrong door.

Research shows that concrete support influences decisions. My own experience tells me the same thing.

I walked out of that clinic over 30 years ago because someone loved me enough to show up. That is what changes the outcome. Not a prosecutor.

Protecting life requires more than conviction. It requires strategies that actually work, ones that keep women connected to help rather than driving them away.

The pro-life movement has spent decades building something remarkable. We should not undercut it now with policies that punish the very people we are called to serve.

No woman was ever talked out of an abortion by the threat of a prison cell. She chooses life when compassion shows her a way through.

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