Some conservatives are already trying to use the Castro case to argue for restricting reproductive choice. Noting the possibility of Castro’s execution, Charles C.W. Cooke writes at The National Review’s blog The Corner, “Yet abortion is legal in Ohio, as everywhere else in the United States. This means that if you kill an unborn child in Ohio with the mother’s permission, it’s okay; if you do it without her permission, it’s murder. The unborn child, therefore, is only a life if the mother says it is a life. That makes no logical sense at all. It is the logic of slavery, not of individual liberty. Who will defend it?”

To be sure, if prosecutors charge Castro with murder, it won’t be because they’re trying to gain ground in the abortion wars. It’s their job to seek the maximum possible penalty against such a man. There must be a way to do that, though, that doesn’t treat Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight as only secondary victims. Attacking a woman so that she miscarries should certainly be treated as a grave crime, but a crime primarily against the woman. Otherwise, it’s only a short step to treat women who cause their own miscarriages as murderers.

“While there absolutely should be additional charges to causing women to lose their pregnancies, when we do it in a way that separates fertilized eggs, embryos, or fetuses from the pregnant women, it’s inevitably and always used as a mechanism for further dehumanizing and criminalizing pregnant women themselves,” says Lynn Paltrow, the National Advocates for Pregnant Women’s executive director. Castro’s abominations must be punished without turning into a pretext to punish other women as well.