The Falsehood of the Second Victim Narrative

Many evangelicals have likely heard about the incident two years ago in which dozens of pro-life organizations shockingly opposed a bill in Louisiana that would have fully abolished abortion.

Christians in the state had labored to earn support for the proposed abolition bill that would merely have applied the same homicide laws which already protected born people to preborn people, and were thrilled as legislators enthusiastically advanced the bill out of committee.

Yet days later, on the same morning that the bill was to receive a vote in the Louisiana House, those leading national pro-life organizations wrote a letter addressed to “all state legislators in the United States of America” encouraging them to oppose that bill and similar efforts. The very pro-life legislators who approved the bill in committee then opposed the measure on the floor.

This instantly caused confusion for believers across the nation. Why were the most influential pro-life groups in the country opposing a bill that would have immediately abolished abortion?

The reason for their opposition to the bill, as described in the letter, was the fact that mothers who take the lives of their preborn children could have been prosecuted for murder if the bill had been made law. The organizations declared that “women are victims of abortion” and added that they “do not support any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women” for their abortions.

The abolition bill, to be clear, did not specifically single out women for criminal penalties. The bill simply affirmed that preborn babies, like other people made in the image of God, are entitled to justice when their lives are unjustly taken, and that anyone who willfully takes part in that unjust taking of life should be subject to prosecution. The pro-life organizations took specific issue with the fact that mothers could thus be penalized for murdering preborn babies.

The pro-life establishment has contended for decades that women are second victims of abortion. They have claimed that women who seek abortions are usually coerced by abusive boyfriends or family members, or are simply unaware that they are nurturing a human life.

But Christians involved in sidewalk ministry at abortion mills or counseling at pregnancy centers will notice the falsehood of these assertions. Even as true situations of duress sometimes occur, the vast majority of abortions are carried out simply because the parents, mother and father alike, do not want the responsibility of caring for a baby, and therefore find a way to murder that baby under cover of law, usually at an abortion mill or with abortion pills sent to their homes.

Just as abortion, infanticide, and child sacrifice are far from novelties in world history, Christians in the twenty-first century are far from the only ones who have made these observations about the motives that lie behind those who take the lives of preborn babies made in the image of God, including with respect to the culpability of women who willfully participate in abortions.

The consistent testimony of the church through the centuries shows that believers have always considered abortion to be murder for all parties involved, including the woman who is willfully involved in that decision, meaning that the second victim narrative is demonstrably heterodox.

The fact that Christians have advocated against the murder of both preborn babies and newborn infants soon after the ascension of our Lord is beyond dispute.

George Grant, the pastor emeritus of Parish Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee, in his helpful book Third Time Around: A History of the Pro-Life Movement from the First Century to the Present, includes countless quotations to this effect in the first few chapters of the volume, both from the prophets and apostles as recorded in the Scriptures, as well as in the writings and apologetics of the church fathers, who found themselves in a world filled with child sacrifice.

Several of the church fathers cited by Grant preached against abortion and had no problem condemning the murder of the preborn when willfully pursued by the mothers of those children.

“She who has deliberately destroyed a fetus must bear the penalty for murder. Moreover those who aid her, who give abortifacients for the destruction of a child conceived in the womb, are murderers themselves, along with those receiving the poisons” (Basil of Caesarea).

“They deny in their very womb their own progeny. By use of parricidal mixtures they snuff out the fruit of their wombs. In this way life is taken before it is given” (Ambrose of Milan).

“They who drink potions to ensure sterility are guilty of rebuffing God’s own blessings. Some, when they learn that the potions have failed and thus are with child through sin, practice abortion by use of still other potions. They are then guilty of three crimes: self-mutilation, adultery, and the murder of an unborn child” (Jerome of Stridon).

“They provoke women to such extravagant methods as to use poisonous drugs to secure barrenness, or else, if unsuccessful in this, to murder the unborn child” (Augustine of Hippo).

In other words, because they were driven by an understanding of men and women in their fallen natures, and with a view toward the impartiality inherent to the law of God, the church from the earliest centuries had no issue saying that women who willfully seek abortions are murderers.

Most of the pro-life establishment lobbyists who claim that women are second victims of abortion would consider themselves Protestant or Roman Catholic. Surely they have volumes written by the aforementioned men collecting dust on their bookshelves, not to mention Bibles with the five books of Moses, the prophetic calls to establish justice from Isaiah and Amos, and the affirmation of these teachings from Jesus and the apostles. Yet one of their core pro-life claims about child sacrifice in our day is at odds with the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

One such pro-life establishment lobbyist is Brent Leatherwood, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which is the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. Leatherwood was confronted about his endorsement of the letter that killed the abolition bill by Brian Gunter, the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Livingston, Louisiana.

Gunter, one of the pastors who had devotedly advocated for the abolition bill before the chief lobbyist of his own denomination nixed the effort, simply wanted to know whether Leatherwood would apply the same legal philosophy in the case of a baby who had already been born.

“You have said that you believe a mother should not be criminalized if she willfully chooses to have an abortion while her child is in the womb,” Gunter asked Leatherwood last year during a session at the annual meeting for the denomination. “Do you believe that same mother should be criminalized if she willfully chooses to murder her child after that child is born?” 

Leatherwood asserted to Gunter that the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission believes “abortion is murder” but insisted that “there is a preborn child that is vulnerable, and there is a mother that is vulnerable, too, and she has been preyed upon by a culture of death.”

“We should go after, with the full force of law, the people who actually take the life of that child: the abortionist, the abortion mills, and the drug manufacturers who make the chemicals,” he continued. “We have to make sure that we are not doing the bidding of Planned Parenthood, of achieving their goal of casting the pro-life movement and our churches, with our gospel convictions, as anti-woman rather than being about saving babies and supporting mothers.”

Leatherwood and other pro-life establishment leaders have made their position abundantly clear. They believe that mothers should never be penalized for willfully murdering their babies. 

This position has allowed for self-managed abortion to flourish across the country as mothers increasingly order abortion pills through the mail without the possibility of any criminal prosecution, contributing to elevated levels of abortion even in pro-life conservative states.

Beyond the issue of criminal justice, however, this position has massive implications for how Christians respond to women who have had abortions. When women are called second victims of abortion, they are denied the forgiveness for murderers found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jeff Durbin, a pastor at Apologia Church in Mesa, Arizona, and a founder of End Abortion Now, described this reality in a recent sermon delivered at a conference for pastors. He noted that one who is truly an innocent victim has no need to confess sins or receive forgiveness, because only the perpetrator in that situation would be guilty. In the case of a mother forced into an abortion, for instance, only the father who compels her under duress to have the abortion, as well as the abortionist involved in destroying the preborn child, would be guilty for that murder.

Durbin observed, however, that throughout the years of his pastoral ministry, he has comforted women who willfully murdered their children and are still grieving their decision made five, ten, or twenty years earlier, not with the empty assertion that they are mere victims, but with the sure promise and glorious truth that Jesus Christ abundantly pardons sinners even for murder.

“If we say to her ‘you are a victim,’ we are robbing her of the gospel,” Durbin emphasized to his fellow ministers in the sermon. “We cannot compromise with the pro-life establishment on this issue of the woman being a victim. If she is a victim, she does not need Jesus, and she does not need forgiveness. Is that our message? Is that the message of the Christian church?”

That cannot be the message of the church, especially in a nation where as many as one in four women have murdered their own preborn babies and desperately need that forgiveness.

There is considerable cultural pressure in a society awash with feminism, even in the institutional evangelical church and the pro-life movement, to downplay the truth that women indeed make conscious decisions to take the lives of their preborn children for sinful reasons.

The legislator may be tempted to downplay this truth to win his next election. The pastor may be tempted to downplay this truth to keep the peace or avoid offense in his church. The layman may be tempted to downplay this truth for fear of what others may think about his stance.

Yet faithfulness before God and love for our neighbors, both the preborn child who can be legally murdered and the woman filled with guilt and shame for having played a part in murder, demand that we confront the second victim narrative with clarity, sobriety, and boldness.

We must affirm that all preborn babies are persons made in the image of God. We must affirm that all who willfully take the lives of those innocent persons should be penalized by our laws as murderers. We must affirm that all who have murdered preborn babies can receive forgiveness in Jesus Christ, who bore the penalty of murderers on the cross and rose for their justification.

We must reject the heterodoxy of the second victim narrative. We must instead confess, alongside our forefathers in the Scriptures and throughout church history, the reality of human depravity and the abundantly good news of the gospel, especially as applied to child sacrifice.