Abortion Criminalization: Navigating Legal Limits and Moral Complexities

by Savannah Southall • October 11, 2025

Abortion raises vital questions about life, rights, and moral responsibility. While often framed as a matter of women’s rights, it also involves protecting unborn human life. From conception, a unique human being exists with inherent dignity. From a deontological perspective—focused on duty and respect for life—ending innocent life is morally wrong and senseless. Society must protect both mother and child by offering support so that abortion is never the only option.

When a pregnancy threatens the mother’s life, she should have the right to choose, including the choice to sacrifice her own life if she so decides. Regardless of her decision, she must receive full medical and emotional support and should never be abandoned. Utilitarian and autonomy-based ethics prioritize happiness or freedom but risk devaluing vulnerable lives. According to Divine Command Theory, if God protects life and evil opposes it, then the unborn are at risk even before birth. The deontological approach affirms every human’s worth and calls for compassion.

A society that accepts abortion too easily risks normalizing it, shifting life from a sacred gift to a conditional choice. In the United States, 17 percent of pregnancies ended in abortion and 15 percent in fetal loss in 2020 (Guttmacher Institute, 2023), meaning nearly one-third did not result in birth. Additionally, 41.6 percent of pregnancies were unintended (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2023). The chance of pregnancy loss or abortion is high—and the odds of being born from an unplanned pregnancy are also high. In a world that normalizes abortion, the odds of birth decrease if a mother believes ending life is the responsible choice.

If abortion is not minimized, more people may die in utero than are born. This makes abortion deeply personal: you exist and have a voice, but millions never had a choice. No one’s stance changes that bioethical reality—you were born. Let the unborn speak for themselves. Just because some cannot hear them does not mean they do not deserve to be born. The loss of unborn life continues to echo through our society and our conscience. Silence in the face of that loss is complicity; we each have a moral responsibility to stand for life.

Sources:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, April 12). Unintended pregnancy. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/releases/20230412.htm

• Guttmacher Institute. (2023). Unintended pregnancy in the United States. https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-united-states