In March, a Tennessee House Committee, with support from pro-life organizations, defeated an Equal Protection bill that would have allowed women receiving abortions to be prosecuted for murder. While the proposed legislation failed, it reignited an old debate over prosecuting women—and generated headlines claiming Republicans want the death penalty for those who abort. In pre-Roe America, pro-life legislation exempted women receiving abortions from murder charges. There were three reasons for this exemption. First, lawmakers concluded that punishing abortion on the supply side (i.e., the abortionist) would dramatically reduce its occurrence. Second, prosecutors needed the testimony of the woman to convict the abortionist, and without immunity, she had no incentive to testify against him. Third, lawmakers concluded that many women seeking abortions acted without full knowledge, having been coerced by boyfriends, family members, or society into making a wrong choice. Equal Protection proponents reject these historical considerations. Scripture, so the Equal Protection argument goes, warns against “unequal weights and unequal measures,” which are an abomination to the Lord (Prov. 20:10). Thus, abortion must be punished the same way as other unjust killings. Prosecutors and juries may, if they choose, exercise discretion on a case-by-case basis and opt for lesser penalties, but written abortion law must never exclude women who receive abortions from prosecution for murder, especially when many, perhaps a majority, know exactly what they’re doing. Only then can a pro-life law have legitimate moral and biblical standing. Equal Protection advocates correctly point out that we’re a long way from Bill Clinton’s mantra that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Social media is replete with “Shout Your Abortion” posts where women celebrate having multiple abortions, claiming full knowledge of what they’re doing. That should trouble every pro-lifer, right? Yes, it should. However, in their haste to hold women accountable, Equal Protection advocates overlook a cautionary truth from Proverbs 27:12: “The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.” The failure to see danger culturally and politically is precisely what’s missing from many discussions about Equal Protection legislation. Rather, we’re told that opponents (principally, “the Pro-Life establishment”) are deeply compromised, inconsistent, lack principle, and think mothers should get a pass to commit murder. However, is a compromised ethic the real driver behind pro-life opposition to Equal Protection legislation? Read the Room Nearly all pro-lifers agree there should be consequences for intentionally killing an innocent human being. But what those consequences should be must take into account prudential concerns rooted in political and cultural realism. Consider the current cultural landscape. When voters in deeply red states like Montana, Ohio, Missouri, and Kentucky (with more to come) are eagerly affirming unrestricted abortion or writing it into their state constitutions—not to mention battleground and blue states doing so at full throttle—pro-lifers must realistically evaluate their legislative objectives. Counting the cost culturally and politically is precisely what’s missing from many discussions about Equal Protection legislation. We might wish it weren’t so, but the relentless drumbeat of stories claiming that women will die from abortion restrictions or be prosecuted for suffering miscarriage resonates not only with the general public but also with marginally pro-life voting blocks. Even more troubling, these stories resonate with skittish “pro-life” lawmakers whose votes are needed to pass protections for unborn humans. Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming is a case in point. Though disliked by the GOP base, Cheney was a reliable pro-life vote for House Republicans. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America gave her an A grade for her voting record, while Planned Parenthood gave her a 0 percent score. Nevertheless, she told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “You have pro-life women all across this country who have been watching what’s happened in places like Texas and places like North Carolina, where since Roe was overturned, you’ve had laws put in place at the state level that are preventing women from getting life-saving care.” Cheney justified her support for abortion advocate Kamala Harris in 2024 by saying that pro-life and pro-choice women are uniting behind candidates committed to protecting health care and safety for women. Meanwhile, public opinion continues to worsen, even among churchgoing Christians predisposed to embrace the pro-life view. Only 43 percent of churchgoers now identify as pro-life, a 20-point crash in just two years. “The extensive survey, which polled more than 1,000 adults who attend Christian worship services at least monthly, paints a picture of a church struggling with its convictions in the face of overwhelming cultural pressure,” one reporter writes. “The research suggests that on foundational moral issues, the gap between those in the pews and the secular public is narrowing at an accelerated pace.” Against that backdrop of collapsing public opinion and a damning cultural narrative that suggests pro-lifers hate women and want them to die, why should anyone believe that now is the time to lead with bills that allow the prosecution for murder of women receiving abortions? Will the result be biblical justice or more dead babies from fewer pro-life votes? Pursue Prudence If you think these prudential concerns are a stretch, consider a case study from my colleague Jonathon Van Maren: Suppose a state passes a so-called Equal Protection bill that allows prosecution for murder. Let’s further imagine a young woman, we’ll call her Lily, is raised in an evangelical home, is taught pro-life apologetics, sees videos depicting abortion, and hears abortion routinely condemned from the pulpit. There is no denying that she knows abortion is wrong. At 18, Lily goes off to university and is swept off her feet by a non-Christian guy, her first real boyfriend. Physical lines are crossed. By Thanksgiving break, she is pregnant, panics, and takes the abortion pill. Lily is arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Envision the images from that courtroom during that trial—the photos of Lily weeping along with her devastated family—which dominate the news cycle for months, jeopardizing every pro-life vote in the country for the foreseeable future. Now, imagine a pro-life candidate trying to defend that courtroom scene on the campaign trail. In his book Politics for the Greatest Good, attorney and historian Clarke Forsythe reminds us that successful social reformers have always recognized a tension between applying moral principles and the cultural and political realities of the day. William Wilberforce was committed in principle to the full abolition of slavery. However, between 1800 and 1803, he pulled back his abolition bill because war with France made the political climate unfavorable. Later, in 1805, he paused yet again when the British attorney general introduced a foreign slave trade bill with exceptions that only banned the slave trade in conquered territories. This was put forth as a matter of national security. Wilberforce supported this incremental step and deferred his own general abolition bill for a more favorable time. Similarly, Abraham Lincoln prudently withheld his Emancipation Proclamation until after the Army of the Potomac achieved marginal success at Antietam in late 1862. Only then could he convince reluctant Northerners to prosecute a war against slavery. As Robert George points out, “Politics is the art of the possible. And, as Frederick Douglass reminded us in his tribute to Lincoln, public opinion and other constraints sometimes limit what can be done at the moment to advance any just cause.” Pro-life advocates don’t have to choose between unprincipled pragmatism that downplays evil and unrealistic purism that allows evil to remain unchecked. Following Wilberforce and Lincoln, we can (and should) pursue political prudence that doesn’t compromise our principles but seeks to limit evil and promote the good insofar as political realities allow. Recognize Different Levels of Knowing While most abortion-minded women know that abortion kills something alive, American jurisprudence recognizes different levels of knowing, making it difficult to prosecute the aborting woman for first-degree murder. Forsythe writes, “Every prosecution of a woman would require a probing, detailed examination of her mens rea, her state of mind.” Proving that she knows what the abortionist knows isn’t easy. True, the woman and the abortionist both knowingly contract to the abortion procedure, but after that their respective levels of knowing diverge dramatically. For example, abortionist Warren Hern, author of Abortion Practice, the premier medical teaching text on abortion, instructs operators to use a Doppler device to measure fetal heartbeat, but that device, he writes, should be “inaudible to the patient,” meaning she doesn’t hear what the abortionist hears. Elsewhere, Hern told a Planned Parenthood Conference that abortion staff can no longer deny their participation in an “act of destruction.” He wrote, “It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.” The aborting mother doesn’t experience these sensations or see the dismembered fetal remains. Only the abortionist does. In short, her knowledge doesn’t match what the abortionist knows during the procedure. Moreover, one can plausibly argue that many women don’t know abortion facts the way Lily in our case study did. One survey found that only one in four Americans can correctly answer basic questions related to prenatal development. Of those with a correct understanding, many still support abortion, suggesting that while knowledge of fetal development may be necessary for rejecting abortion, it may not be sufficient. There are still massive worldview and moral-reasoning hurdles to overcome. This shouldn’t surprise us. For half a century, American women were told that abortion was not only a legal right but a positive moral good. Major institutions—academia, law, politics, entertainment, media, and even mainline denominations—reinforced that view, and still do. At the same time, the teaching of basic biology surrounding prenatal development was, and is, all but absent in public schools. Many medical professionals and parents consider teaching these facts propaganda. Churches can actively correct these false narratives in their public teaching and personal discipleship. Pro-life advocates don’t have to choose between unprincipled pragmatism that downplays evil and unrealistic purism that allows evil to remain unchecked. Even if a woman self-aborts using mail-order pills, securing a murder conviction is a tall order. Since nearly every opinion leader in society is either silent on abortion or asserts that first-trimester fetuses aren’t fully human, the public will likely conclude that a woman who takes a pill to terminate a very early pregnancy doesn’t possess actionable knowledge justifying prosecution. Former Pennsylvania House member and attorney Gregg Cunningham warns pro-life audiences, As long as voters think of unborn babies as blobs, we lose. The “blob” misperception isn’t anomalous. It is pervasive. We can’t remediate that disadvantage by locking up women whose incarceration will give pro-abortionists poster girls whose images they can use to kill more babies, hurt more women, and win more elections. Pro-lifers must never compromise their principle that it’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings at any stage of development. Our laws should say so. But we can, given current political and cultural realities, adjust our tactics on penalties to save as many lives as possible.