Equal Protection for Every Image-Bearer

A Simple Claim

Abolitionism begins with a simple claim: every human being is an image-bearer of God from the moment of fertilization and is therefore entitled to the equal protection of the law until natural death. Killing that image-bearer with malice aforethought is murder. Civil government is established by God and has a duty to prohibit and punish that murder without partiality—without creating a separate, lesser category of human being whose death may be arranged or procured with legal immunity.

West Virginia's Exemption

Most abortion statutes, including West Virginia’s, reject that standard in practice. Our state’s Unborn Child Protection Act declares abortion illegal in nearly all cases. At the same time, the code states:

This section shall not be construed to subject any pregnant female upon whom an abortion is performed or induced or attempted to be performed or induced to a criminal penalty…West Virginia Code, Unborn Child Protection Act

Parallel exemptions appear elsewhere in the code. The child is protected on paper; the mother who obtains the killing is categorically shielded from criminal liability as principal, accessory, accomplice, conspirator, or aider and abettor. That is not equal protection. It is a legal permission for one class of people to arrange the death of another.

That is not equal protection. It is a legal permission for one class of people to arrange the death of another.

The "Second Victim" Claim

The same exemption is defended by much of the organized pro-life movement under the claim that the mother is a “second victim.” When equal-protection bills have been introduced in other states, pro-life organizations have testified against them and pressured legislators who support them. The argument rests on a selective empathy that Scripture does not authorize. It treats the child’s death as a regrettable outcome for which the mother bears no moral or legal responsibility, while continuing to call the act a grave wrong.