On October 31, 2024, 28-year-old BreAnna L. Johnson of Wentzville, Missouri, was murdered by her live-in boyfriend, 40-year-old Darryl K. Tyson, Jr. On December 18, 2024, the county grand jury indicted Mr. Tyson with three counts of first-degree murder. An autopsy report revealed she had been shot five times, four times in the back. She died later at the hospital. He was indicted with three counts of first-degree murder because she was pregnant with twins, both of whom also died.
In 31 states, “homicide laws recognize unborn children as victims throughout the period of pre-natal development,” while eight states have partial “...homicide laws that recognize unborn children as victims, but only during part of the period of pre-natal development.” In New York, “the killing of an ‘unborn child’ after twenty-four weeks of pregnancy is homicide.” Only one state, Iowa, “...recognizes only a single victim in a violent act on an expectant mother.”
In other words, most states recognize the humanity of the unborn throughout development. Nonetheless, the case of BreAnna Johnson, as well as all similar cases in which a pregnant woman is murdered, raises the issue of guilt associated with the intentional legalized ending of life of the unborn.
Image by Freepik AI.
If a person other than the mother is guilty of additional murder or manslaughter charges when he kills a pregnant woman, why is a mother—the one most responsible for nurturing and protecting her unborn, dependent and vulnerable child—allowed to end that child’s life by some of the most gruesome and cruel means? Such means involve things such as saline solution poisoning, cracking the skull open and sucking out the brain, and dismemberment.
Murder is murder, isn’t it? This is incongruity at its highest and lowest level. Highest in questionable principle and lowest in debasing and devaluation of life practices.
Sadly, killing the unborn by abortion is so politicized that the basic moral principle of each person’s intrinsic value is ignored or lost. An innocent, dependent and vulnerable person has become a mere commodity with its parts being sold or trashed.
Does Planned Parenthood realize that what its workers freely and legally do to millions of these tiny victims, if done in another context, could land the actor in prison, perhaps for life? In fact, the deaths of these victims of recognized crimes might also be less painful and gruesome than what is done to those victims yet in their mothers’ wombs in so many clinics across America.
In the Jewish Torah, if two men fighting end up killing a pregnant woman’s unborn baby, the one responsible had to pay with his life—"a life for a life.” (Exodus 21: 22-23) In the Christian first century Didache (Teachings of the Twelve Apostles) it states: “...thou shalt not kill a child by abortion, neither shalt thou slay it when born...” (Didache 2: 2) Both religions considered killing the unborn a moral issue.
Factually, abortion is rarely related to rape or a woman’s life. The truth is that those dependent and vulnerable human beings—that biological and medical science now recognize as beginning with conception—violently lose their lives by the millions simply because they are unwanted. This cannot be repeated enough! Where else or for whom else do our laws allow people to be killed simply because they are unwanted?
Isn’t it time for Americans to face the moral incongruity of the injustice of the legalized, immoral, and intentional killing of the unborn by the millions while harshly penalizing the rare illegal unintentional consequences of their dying due to violence or accidents?
For justice to be just, it must be congruent, consistent, and equal. Abortion on demand fails this test and is among the gravest injustices in our nation. For justice to be served, either criminals and abortionists are both equally guilty or both equally innocent. Since so many innocent lives are at stake, I hope we one day decide on the former and not the latter. Let’s include the unborn when we pledge allegiance saying, “...and justice for all” and press for the revocation abortion’s legalization.