Evangelical Pro-Lifers Clash Over Criminalizing Abortion
Ahead of a potential ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, Founders Ministries’ Tom Ascol and other “abolitionists” voice opposition to longstanding “incremental” approach, calling for penalties for women.
The way Florida Southern Baptist pastor Tom Ascol sees it, there is little difference between a woman who chooses to end her pregnancy and a hit man.
Both pay someone to end a human life, his argument goes, and so both should face criminal charges. “It’s like saying if I don’t murder someone, but I just contracted a murderer to murder someone I’m not culpable,” he told Christian radio host Jeff Schreve on Tuesday.
The analogy is not uncommon—Pope Francis has made similar “hit man” comments. Ascol also believes that women who have abortions should be charged with homicide and face potential jail time. And Ascol criticizes “pro-life industry elites,” who, he says, get in the way of ending abortion in America.
Ascol, a leading candidate for president of the Southern Baptist Convention, is part of a small but growing movement of abortion abolitionists who reject the idea that abortion should be allowed if a mother’s life is endangered or in cases of rape or incest.
The movement prompted a bill, now pulled by lawmakers in Louisiana, that would have treated abortion as a homicide.
Abolitionists recently accused the National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of betraying the anti-abortion cause after the groups drafted an open letter opposing criminal penalties for women who have the procedure.
“We state unequivocally that we do not support any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women and we stand firmly opposed to including such penalties in legislation,” the letter read.