Ethics journal backs forced abortion for minors, compares pregnancy to cancer

(LifeSiteNews) — A newly published paper written by two scholars, Alyssa Izatt and Kimberly Brownlee, and published by the University of Chicago Press, argues that girls under 18 should be forced to murder their babies through abortion, including with physical “restraint” or by sedation if necessary.

Izatt and Brownlee’s paper, entitled “Justice for Girls: On the Provision of Abortion as Adequate Care,” published in the April 2026 issue of the University Press’s Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy, calls on doctors to abort an underage girl’s unborn child even if they and their family want to carry them. The authors argue that having the abortion is in the girl’s “best interest,” just as it would be in a cancer patient’s best interest to treat the disease, and claiming that doctors should abort the baby even if that requires “sedation or physical restraint” of the mother.

In the paper’s introduction, the authors underscored that parents or guardians of a young pregnant girl should never “pressure or compel” her to “continue a pregnancy.”

“Nor should they confront her with the three ‘options’ of abortion, adoption, or mothering, as medical professionals are currently advised to do. Instead, her adult caregivers should view her impregnation as a malady and take steps to terminate it,” they wrote.

Later in the piece, Izatt and Brownlee strikingly compare a doctor murdering a child through abortion to treating diseases such as cancer and performing procedures like a child’s organ transplant. They contended that just as it is in the child’s best interest to receive cancer treatment or perhaps an organ donation, it is also in their “best interest” to end their baby’s life.

“By drawing an analogy with child organ donation and with serious medical conditions such as cancer, we show that doctors should revise their approach to treating impregnated children so that adequate medical care includes abortion care,” the scholars wrote.

“Just as in organ donations, the only time caregivers could permit a child to continue a pregnancy would be when she was genuinely uncoerced, faced minimal risk, and had her best interests as a child served. Since carrying a pregnancy to term in childhood will fail to meet some or all of these requirements, caregivers have a moral duty to provide impregnated children with abortion care,” they added.

It’s worth noting that despite the authors’ concerns for young girls being “coerced” into carrying their baby, the abortion lobby has long turned a blind eye to abortion coercion.

Live Action’s “Aiding Abusers” series draws on news reports, eyewitness testimony, and undercover video to expose Planned Parenthood employees’ willingness to offer abortions to girls as young as 12 without reporting signs of statutory or forcible rape to law enforcement. This enables the men who brought the girls in for appointments to bring them home and continue abusing them.

Indeed, in 2023, the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute released a study that interviewed 1,000 American women and found that 61 percent of women who undergo abortions do so due to pressure from “male partners, family members, other persons, financial concerns, and other circumstances.”

READ: Over 60% of abortions are coerced in some way: peer-reviewed study

Izatt and Brownlee further contended that in the event an underage girl “interpret(s) her pregnancy as a baby and feel(s) love for it and a desire to be a mother,” or her family objects, she might “require sedation or physical restraint” to carry out the abortion.

“Providing abortion care to such a girl is an admittedly grim prospect, especially since she might resist the treatment,” the authors wrote.

“Providing care might then require sedation or physical restraint, which could be traumatizing, especially since this is a girl who most likely has already had her bodily integrity violated by someone. Compelling abortion care for an unwilling girl thus might seem to compound the harm she has already endured,” they added.

Izatt and Brownlee continued:

Here, it is worth considering that, while it may be distressing for parents, medical caregivers, and the patient herself, the use of restraint (chemical or physical) on children to provide lifesaving or life-altering treatment is used in other areas of medicine, including in procedures such as surgeries and cancer treatment, and is justified as a last resort when it is necessary to provide adequate care.

READ: Actress Christina Applegate shares the pain of aborting her child for the sake of her career

While the scholars contend that forcing a likely already traumatized girl to undergo an abortion would be a “lifesaving treatment” like treating cancer, it would be life-ending for her unborn child. They also omitted any mention of the devastating effects that having an abortion has on women. Indeed, even pro-abortion women have described the intense emotional pain of having killed their child.

In an X post, prominent Catholic apologist Trent Horn called the journal’s language on requiring sedation and physical restraint “Orwellian.”

Dude. This is some crazy Orwellian language. It says, “Providing care might then require sedation or physical restraint, which could be traumatizing”.
Do you agree with them doctors are *obligated* to hold down a fourteen-year-old girl and insert things into her vagina even as…

— Trent Horn (@Trent_Horn) March 25, 2026