Questions abolitionists are asking about a personhood amendment, answered from “Why a Personhood Amendment Is Not Abolition.”
Brothers and sisters, these are the questions we hear most often. We agree on who the preborn child is. The answers below are about what the law must do for him.
1. Isn’t a personhood amendment a useful first step? Isn’t recognition better than nothing?
A step is measured by where it takes you. A personhood amendment declares the child a “person” and leaves every statute that governs his killing exactly where it was: abortion still defined as its own offense, still a lesser felony than murder, and those who take part in it still exempt. That is not a first step toward justice. It is a step to the side of it.
And the choice is not between recognition and nothing. It is between a label and a law that does justice. The same legislators who could refer a personhood amendment to the voters could amend the criminal code themselves. Recognition that leaves the killing lawful is not a down payment on justice. It is what we are offered in place of it.
2. If a constitutional abortion right is repealed, shouldn’t it be replaced with a personhood amendment?
Repealing a false right and punishing murder are two different tasks, done by two different kinds of law. A constitution establishes the government, limits its powers, and secures rights. Statutes are the ordinary laws passed by the General Assembly, and the criminal code, including every law against murder, is made of statutes. A constitution can forbid the state to deny a right; it is the statutes that define crimes, fix penalties, and say who may be prosecuted.
So when a false right is removed, the work that remains is not another declaration. It is amending the criminal code so that killing a preborn child is murder under the same statutes, with the same penalties, as killing anyone else.
3. Wouldn’t personhood make all existing laws apply to preborn children automatically?
No. Missouri has already tested this. Since 1986, section 1.205 has declared that “the life of each human being begins at conception” and directed that state law give the unborn child “all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons.” Yet that statute was written to yield to “specific provisions to the contrary,” and the contrary provisions are still on the books. Abortion remains under its own statute, § 188.017, as a class B felony rather than murder, and the mother “shall not be prosecuted for a conspiracy to violate” it.
Alabama proves the same thing at the constitutional level. Its personhood amendment stood while the legislature granted immunity first to mothers and then to the IVF industry. A declaration does not rewrite the statutes. Only the statutes do.
4. Isn’t personhood the foundation for abolition?
The foundation is already laid, and God laid it: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God He made man” (Genesis 9:6). The child is protected because of what he is, a human being made in God’s image, not because of what a legislature calls him. Missouri has had the personhood label in statute since 1986, and nothing has been built on it. What is missing is not a foundation but the will to apply the law of murder to the preborn.
5. Abolition bills use the word “person” too. Isn’t that a contradiction?
No. The question is not whether the word is used but where it is placed and what it does. An abolition bill puts “person” inside the homicide statutes, so that the word determines whose killing is murder and who may be prosecuted for it. A personhood amendment uses the same word as a declaration standing apart from those statutes, leaving the abortion provisions and exemptions untouched. The word is not the problem. Leaving it unattached to the law of murder is.
6. Wouldn’t removing the mother’s immunity be enough?
No. Remove only the mother’s exemption, and abortion is still a class B felony rather than murder. The injustice lives in several provisions at once: the offense is defined separately, the penalty is lesser, exemptions are granted, and the rules on who may be prosecuted are different. All of them must change together. That means one law of homicide applied to every human being, born and preborn, with the same prohibition, the same penalties, and no class of killers excused in advance.
7. Isn’t incremental progress better than none? Doesn’t political reality require compromise? Doesn’t the Bible allow gradual reform?
Changing laws takes time; we know that. Bills must be written, argued, and passed. But the time it takes to change a law is not the same as changing the standard the law must meet. God’s standard is not incremental: “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). “You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small as well as the great” (Deuteronomy 1:17). A measure that leaves the killing of one class of human beings lawful, or punishes it as something less than murder, is not a partial fulfillment of that standard. It is partiality written into law.
Political difficulty may explain why a measure is offered. It does not make the measure just. “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ” (Galatians 1:10). Our Lord rebuked those who tended to lesser things and “neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith” (Matthew 23:23). The word “person” costs a legislator nothing. Justice is what it is meant to replace.
8. Couldn’t a personhood amendment build a broader coalition?
It could, and that is exactly the problem. Personhood draws a broad coalition because people can support the label while disagreeing about whether abortion should be treated as murder. A pro-life legislator can affirm that the child is a person without voting to punish his killing as murder, without disturbing the immunity granted to mothers, and without confronting the abortion statute at all. The agreement is real, but it is purchased by leaving out the one thing that divides us. Common ground that requires us to set aside equal justice is not common ground with the law of God.
9. What about miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, or treatment needed to save the mother’s life?
None of these is murder, and equal justice does not make them murder. A miscarriage is a natural death; no one has killed the child. Treating an ectopic pregnancy, or giving genuinely life-saving treatment to a mother, is not the intentional killing of her child. Ordinary homicide principles have always distinguished intentional killing from natural death and from treatment given to save life. Those same principles would govern here, as they do for every other human being. What the law of murder forbids is the intentional killing of a preborn child, and that is the only thing we are asking it to punish.
10. Would equal treatment criminalize women who have abortions?
Equal treatment means no class of people is exempt, and that includes the mother. “He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 17:15). The law of homicide does not grant blanket immunity to anyone in advance, and it should not grant it here. Neither does it presume guilt. Every person accused would receive what every person accused of homicide receives: ordinary due process, the requirement of evidence, and every defense the law already allows. The circumstances of each case are weighed as in any other homicide. That is not harshness. It is impartial justice.
11. How can we know whether a proposal is meaningful?
Read the operative language, not the title or the press release. Ask:
- Does it amend the homicide statutes themselves, including Missouri’s murder statutes (§§ 565.020–.021), so that they apply to every preborn human being from fertilization?
- Does it repeal or override the conflicting abortion provisions and exemptions, such as § 188.017?
- Does it specify the same penalties that protect anyone else?
- Does it treat medical circumstances and ordinary defenses the way homicide law treats them for everyone?
If the answer is no, the proposal changes the vocabulary, not the law. The test is whether it changes the law that governs the killing.
The Central Distinction
The standard of justice is not incremental, even if the political path often is. “Deliver those who are drawn toward death, and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter” (Proverbs 24:11). A label rescues no one. Brothers and sisters, let us ask for the law of murder to be applied equally to every human being, born and preborn.