Year: 2011

On March 26, 2025, I did something I never imagined I would: I spoke out against a bill claimed to protect children in the womb. I opposed HB441 not because I deny the sanctity of life, but because its vague language and flawed approach risk doing more harm than good. By failing to clearly recognize unborn children as persons entitled to equal protection and due process, HB441 undermines the very cause it claims to champion: ending abortion in Georgia.

The bill’s language is alarmingly weak. It states, “A person convicted of the offense of battery of an unborn child shall be guilty of a misdemeanor,” with the same penalty applied to assault. A misdemeanor for taking a life? I searched for any precedent where the intentional killing of a born child is treated as a mere misdemeanor and found none. HB441’s vague wording could allow, absurdly, an abortion provider, who deliberately ends an unborn child’s life, to face only a misdemeanor charge for assault or battery. This raises a critical question in my mind: Is the intentional killing of an unborn child merely an assault or battery? Or does equal protection demand that an unborn child receive the same legal safeguards as a born child whose life is taken in a criminal act?

Moreover, HB441’s narrow defense of coercion—limited to preventing “imminent death or great bodily injury”—ignores the brutal realities many women face. I recall the testimony of a 14-year-old girl at a hearing for GA HB1155. Her mother threatened to throw her out if she didn’t abort her child. Despite her pleas to keep her baby, the abortion was performed. Under HB441, the threat of homelessness would not qualify as a coercion defense, leaving vulnerable girls like her to run the risk of arrest and criminal charges.. This provision fails to account for the coercion that drives many abortions, punishing the very victims it should protect.

For 52 years, society has indoctrinated women to believe they have a constitutional right to end their unborn child’s life. If we enact laws tomorrow recognizing the personhood of the unborn, will women instantly accept this seismic shift? History offers a lesson: after the Civil War, the abolition of slavery required a Reconstruction era to address the legal, social, and cultural challenges of reintegrating a fractured nation. Similarly, recognizing the personhood of the unborn demands a transitional period—a “reconstruction” to reeducate society and restore a culture that values all human life.

During this period, we should hold abortion providers immediately accountable for taking lives, as they knowingly profit from these acts. However, we must extend a grace period to women, who have been misled by decades of cultural conditioning. Punishing them without addressing this entrenched mindset risks alienating those we seek to protect. By combining accountability for providers with compassion for women, we can rebuild a society that upholds the sanctity of life for all—born and unborn.