The conservative movement was pleasantly surprised last week when Allie Beth Stuckey, a podcast host with The Blaze, published a debate on her show with political commentator David French on her show.
While he still claims to be a conservative, French has increasingly become a pariah on the right, earning a reputation for denouncing perceived problems within evangelicalism even as he overlooks or excuses the far greater issues that define the progressive left.
Stuckey and French largely centered their discussion on the former’s critique of “toxic empathy,” the type of feeling for others that becomes untethered from truth and reality. French claimed that conservative circles have developed a serious lack of empathy in recent years, and Stuckey said that conservatives are merely rejecting “toxic empathy.”
In one of his two NYT articles critiquing my book “Toxic Empathy,” David French claims that I argue against feeling badly for dying children.
I push back against that complete mischaracterization.
In response, French asserts: “I have seen you online, when people talk about the… pic.twitter.com/LrJdqXQsBv
— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) April 18, 2026
The debate ventured into the realm of abortion, with French saying that he was worried about the rise of the abortion abolition movement and the drive to “potentially imprison mothers.”
French frowned upon the idea of “punitive criminal laws” aimed at women who willfully murder their preborn babies, claiming that such tactics are not only “political folly” and show a “profound lack of empathy,” but would mark “moral folly.” He even said there is an “apples and oranges” difference between homicide statutes and penalties for abortion, despite claiming to believe that life starts at conception.
🚨 BREAKING: @DavidAFrench said he is “worried” about abortion abolitionists and their “profound lack of empathy.”@DavidAFrench described prosecuting abortion as murder for all parties willfully involved as “moral folly” and said comparing abortion law to homicide law is… pic.twitter.com/Vcz84TLm3s
— Foundation to Abolish Abortion (@AbolitionistFAA) April 17, 2026
Stuckey saw through the inconsistency of French’s views on the matter, showing how Christians who believe abortion is murder must also believe that murdering preborn babies should be illegal for everyone, including their own mothers. She noted that abolitionists call for penalties on a “case-by-case basis,” yet recognize that many women “know exactly what they’re doing.”
“The bigger idea is that if we really believe that all human beings are made in the image of God from the moment of conception, why doesn’t that little baby deserve the same rights that you and I do?” Stuckey asked her guest.
The podcast host observed that a refusal to penalize everyone willfully involved with taking the life of a preborn baby is indeed treating them unequally relative to born people.
The abolitionist position simply holds that true equal protection of the laws for preborn babies would require criminalizing abortion as murder for everyone involved, using the exact same laws that already protect born people from murder. While many states penalize third-party abortionists and fathers who participate in abortion, pro-life states have exemptions in their laws keeping abortion legal for women.
This reality has enabled the current rise in abortion pill orders into conservative states, since prosecutors cannot hold women who use the substances accountable under the law.
In many cases, pro-life voices fall into the same “toxic empathy” denounced by Stuckey, since allowing their feelings for women who have abortions to become divorced from the truth that abortion is murder and should be penalized accordingly.
French is a prime example of such a voice. He is also far from the only pro-life leader who rejects penalties for mothers who murder their preborn babies. Major pro-life establishment groups routinely oppose equal protection bills that would impose these standards, and the leading state and national pro-life groups have even signed an open letter to elected officials against all equal protection legislation.
Beyond rejecting homicide charges for women who have abortions, pro-life groups oppose any degree of accountability in such circumstances, no matter how lenient. In recent days, the political arm of Students for Life opposed provisions in a South Carolina bill that would create only misdemeanor penalties for such women, expending political capital to seek the removal of the provisions from the effort.
The online reaction to the exchange between French and Stuckey nevertheless showed that conservatives see no issue with criminalizing abortion for everyone willfully involved.
The first survey question we asked yesterday during @TPUSA AmFest was the following:
“Should everyone who willfully aborts a preborn baby, including the pregnant woman, be charged with murder?”
Yes — 144 (71%)
No — 34 (17%)
Undecided — 25 (12%)The clear majority of… pic.twitter.com/xu6v0Xh64i
— Foundation to Abolish Abortion (@AbolitionistFAA) December 19, 2025
One representative example came from Megan Basham, a reporter at The Daily Wire: “French did not consider that it is a mercy to create real deterrence for seeking an abortion. If there were legal penalties, including potential jail time for soliciting an abortion, most women would not choose it,” she said. “I don’t see how anyone with proper moral formation could fail to see how making it a legal risk to procure an abortion would be merciful to both mother and child.”
Basham asked in another post whether French would “similarly say that we have to empathize with a woman who kills her two-year-old child.”
“Would we have to say, many mothers of young children get overwhelmed by the demands that such caregiving requires so we have to understand when they sometimes drown their toddlers in the bath?” Basham continued. “And if he would not say that, then what is the moral difference?”
Stuckey and Basham are by no means voices outside of the conservative movement. They both work for mainstream conservative organizations and have large followings. Their willingness to affirm the reasonable stance that murdering anyone must be illegal for everyone, and the agreement from their audiences, reflects a broader shift among conservative Christians.
The pro-life organizations standing alongside David French against equal protection are only exposing their lack of moral credibility, disconnection from the base, and increasing irrelevance.
Christians have rightly been discipled over the past several decades to believe that life starts at conception, and that preborn babies are equally valuable as people who have already been born. When those same pro-life groups support ideas calling those foundational principles into question, such as immunity for mothers who willfully murder their preborn babies, their supporters instantly see the inconsistency.
The everyday conservatives are ready to treat abortion as murder and legislate according to that basic reality. The pro-life establishment groups which indulge “toxic empathy” and refuse to follow suit will find themselves losing support, while anti-abortion groups and voices willing to equally protect every human person made in the image of God will continue to make headway.
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