Podcaster’s call to kill women who get abortions sparks debate

A podcaster’s recent suggestion that women who have abortions “should be killed” has led to an explosive debate within the pro-life movement. 

Jenna Ellis, a former attorney for former President Donald Trump and host of “The Jenna Ellis Show” who describes herself as a “servant of Jesus Christ,” shared a clip captured by the left-wing X account Right Wing Watch on Monday. The clip in question, taken from Sunday’s episode of “The Regular Man Podcast,” documents a conversation between host Steve Cruz and former Daily Wire reporter Ben Zeisloft.

“The person who paid to murder this baby and [consented] to kill it, they’re never held accountable for that murder,” Cruz declared, referring to women who have abortions.

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Cruz put air quotes around the term “pro-lifers” as he expressed disappointment that “they never want to hold the mother accountable for this.”

“Dig a hole and put her down.”

This is disgusting and vile and no way to speak of any human being made in God’s image, including a woman who has had an abortion.

This isn’t pro-life, or the way to deal with this issue. Utterly reprehensible. https://t.co/f0ni3Ntp1h

— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) April 29, 2024

Noting that “the mother decided to murder her baby,” Cruz proclaimed, “That’s murder.” He suggested “she should be tried and convicted,” adding, “dig a hole and put her down.”

“Somehow, we’re placating to her, somehow we’re coddling her and holding her and saying it’s OK,” he lamented. “No, you’re a freaking murderer. You should be killed.”

Ellis reacted to the clip by condemning Cruz’s remarks as “disgusting and vile and no way to speak of any human being made in God’s image, including a woman who has had an abortion.”

“This isn’t pro-life, or the way to deal with this issue,” Ellis said. “Utterly reprehensible.”

Cruz responded to Ellis by offering to come on her podcast to discuss his position further. Ellis appeared to laugh off that idea.

“Of course you would, since my platform is 1M+, and you have like five subscribers,” she wrote. 

Ellis responded to Cruz referring to her as a “fake Christian,” expanding on her opposition to the death penalty for women who have abortions in an X post Tuesday.

“[T]he Bible equally values men and women and their status as co-inheritors of Christ and image bearers of God,” Ellis maintained. “When speaking about potential civil punishment for abortion, the pro-life position is not advanced by men treating women without compassion, derogatorily, or as anything less than Imago Dei image bearers.”

After Zeisloft responded to Ellis’ initial post about his conversation with Cruz, Ellis clarified that “I didn’t comment on what if any civil punishments I support for abortions (for women or providers)” but rather asserted that “I said it’s not a pro-life position to use the vile rhetoric you did, specifically, ‘Dig a hole and put her down.'”

Cruz doubled down on his comments in an X post Tuesday.

“If anyone is confused, this should help,” he wrote. “If you murder another person, inside or outside your body, you should be prosecuted to the full [extent] of the law and be prescribed capital punishment for murder. Full stop. Dig a hole and put em down.”

In a separate X post that appears to be a response to Ellis, Cruz expanded on his point of view while taking a shot at “‘Christian’ liberal women” whom he said “scream together with pagan feminists in blood lust for their unfettered ability to murder the unborn with impunity.”

“How [dare] you tell women there ought to be consequences for murdering the unborn!” Cruz said sarcastically. “How dare you suggest the death penalty for legal convictions of murder in a court of law! How dare you call abortion supporters non-Christians! How dare you invite those who disagree to [an] open conversation!”  

Lizzie Marbach, the former communications director of Ohio Right to Life, also responded to Ellis’ criticism. 

“How is this disgusting and vile? The death penalty is what God prescribes for murderers,” Marback stated. “He is speaking about a woman that murder her child. Isn’t THAT disgusting and vile? Isn’t the fact that the pro-life movement gives blanket immunity to women who murder their own children reprehensible?”

“Have you ever actually talked to a woman who has had an abortion?” Ellis responded. “I’m sure it will win hearts and minds to know that the [Christian nationalism] movement wants to ‘put them down’ like they’re ‘less than worthless’ Noem dogs.”

Marbach responded by saying that her argument is “not about putting them down or calling them worthless.”

“In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s about upholding human value & dignity, as God says,” she continued. “Preborn babies lives are not worthless, therefore their murders demands justice. Post-abortive women murdered their child. Your reaction to someone demanding justice for those innocent image bearers is evidence that you view preborn babies as less than.”

In March, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler shared his belief that exempting “women seeking abortions from any moral accountability” constituted “an embarrassing shortfall on the part of many who call themselves pro-life.”

Mohler rejected the “categorical statement that women are just victims when they seek an abortion” as “just not morally credible.”

“That’s just not morally honest, especially in a day in which so many women, particularly in the activist community, they are actually bragging about their abortions,” he said. 

“I think it’s morally insane to suggest that there is no moral culpability there, nor that the law should not recognize that with some form of criminal sanction. I think that’s just clear.”

Mohler said he believes “there is varying moral accountability.”

“I think a woman who’s coerced by a man into an abortion has far less moral culpability than a woman who brags about her abortion and celebrates it as a matter of personal autonomy and tweets about it,” he said. 

Evangelical author and professor Karen Swallow Prior had a different take.

“Where suicide (once called self-murder) is against the law, those who attempt it and fail are not tried, imprisoned or executed but are offered help and assistance. The same principle is applied in all cases of self-harm and self-mutilation,” she wrote in an op-ed for Religion News Service. 

“While the child carried by a pregnant woman is a complete, whole, individual human being, that being is connected to her body,” she contended. “This is a physical and biological reality. It means that the child cannot be helped or protected without supporting the mother, too.”

Characterizing abortion as “a failure not just of individuals but also of the village,” Prior warned that punishing women for having abortions “reinforces the idea that she is a radically autonomous being acting on her own apart from the formation of culture and her culture’s norms and laws.” She stated, “This view stands starkly against the teaching of the Bible, from the Hebrew Scriptures through the New Testament.”