This week an Onlyfans model shared screenshots of NBA player Anthony Edwards offering her $100,000 to abort their baby. Many people immediately said Anthony Edwards forced, coerced, or pressured her to have the abortion. But that’s not true.
She wasn’t pressured into having an abortion, she was persuaded to have an abortion. She isn’t the victim, her baby is. She’s a murderer.
I know what it looks like when a woman is pressured into having an abortion. I know, in depressing detail, what it looks like when a woman is made to believe she has no choice but to kill her pre-born baby. When I was a teenager, one of my closest friends pressured his girlfriend into having an abortion.
She called me one night asking, “Sam, what would you say to a girl considering an abortion?”
My friends know I like asking or receiving random, hypothetical questions. So when I received that phone call, I didn’t think she was asking for help. I didn’t know she was being pressured into having an abortion. So I said, “I don’t know.”
A few days later, she went to an abortion center and killed her baby.
When she confessed to the abortion a year later, she explained that although she accepted her role in her baby’s murder—she probably would have made a different choice if her boyfriend hadn’t given her an ultimatum.
From the text messages, Anthony Edwards didn’t give the Onlyfans model an ultimatum. He didn’t make violent threats. He didn’t make any kind of threat.
That doesn’t mean he’s a good man. It doesn’t mean his words in the text messages aren’t disturbing. He’s a selfish man who murdered his own child. However, he didn’t pressure the Onlyfans model to have an abortion.
Between Anthony Edwards, the Onlyfans model, and their aborted baby: there are two murderers in this story, not two victims. The only victim is the aborted baby.
When a woman agrees to abort her child for $100,000, it means she wasn’t pressured. It means she was persuaded by greed. Just as she sells her body for money, she murdered her baby for money.
We shouldn’t downplay her role in the abortion. If a mother agreed to murder her newborn baby for $100,000, would she be one of the victims or one of the murderers? How is that different from a mother killing her pre-born baby?
We should be gracious with post-abortive women (and men). Abortion is a grievous sin, but it isn’t the unpardonable sin. Post-abortive people who repent and believe in Jesus are just as justified and declared righteous as every other repentant sinner. Therefore, for post-abortive believers, the most important thing about them isn’t what they did to their child—the most important thing about them is what God did to his son on the cross for them.
And according to 1 John 3:15, if we hate post-abortive people, we’re also guilty of murder. So we should love them just as much as we love any other sinner—as much as we want others to love sinners like ourselves.
However, we cannot love them by withholding the truth. Too many of us coddle post-abortive women. We shouldn’t embrace the feminist lie that women aren’t accountable for sinful choices—especially sinful choices they regret.
According to the text messages, this wasn’t the Onlyfans model’s first abortion. She said she regrets her first abortion, but apparently, she didn’t regret the first abortion enough to turn down the $100,000.
Considering the nature of her “work,” it’s probable she’ll have another unplanned pregnancy. So when people suggest she’s a victim for agreeing to murder her baby for money, I don’t think it’ll make her more likely to regret her abortion and repent. Instead, it’s more likely she’ll justify her sin—making a third abortion more likely.
If we don’t stop calling murderers victims, we won’t stop the murder.