Since 1973, America has lost an almost unimaginable number of children.
An estimated 100,000 to 120,000 children under the age of 18 have been murdered in the United States since the 1970s.
Based on available information about identified offenders, approximately 68,000 to 91,000 of those children were killed by adult men.
An estimated 16,500 to 27,000 were killed by adult women.
Men committed most child murders overall, particularly murders involving older children and teenagers.
Women committed a smaller percentage of child murders overall, but they were disproportionately represented in killings involving our youngest and most defenseless children, newborns, infants and toddlers.
Adult female family members were reportedly responsible for more than one-quarter of infant and toddler homicides in a national study covering 2016 through 2020. Women’s involvement then dropped dramatically as the victims’ ages increased.
That distinction matters.
We regularly discuss male violence against children, as we should. But honesty requires us to confront violence committed by women as well, especially when the victims are babies and toddlers who cannot run, fight back, call for help or tell anyone what is happening inside their homes.
Some female offenders experienced domestic violence or abuse by an intimate partner. That abuse is real, serious and deserving of intervention and justice.
But being abused by a partner does not make murdering a child feasible, reasonable, excusable or acceptable.
An abusive partner is responsible for his abuse. An adult who murders a child is responsible for that child’s death.
Trauma may help explain a person’s circumstances, but it does not erase the child, transfer responsibility to the victim or turn murder into an understandable solution. A defenseless child cannot become the acceptable target of an adult’s fear, rage, desperation or resentment.
Those homicide numbers are horrifying by themselves.
Then we place them beside the number of abortions performed in America since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Approximately 66 million abortions were performed between 1973 and the end of 2025.
That number includes abortions reported or estimated through the formal medical system. It does not include abortions that were never reported or self-managed abortions occurring outside that system.
Let that comparison settle for a moment:
Children murdered by adult men:
Approximately 68,000–91,000
Children murdered by adult women:
Approximately 16,500–27,000
Total children murdered by all known, unknown and juvenile offenders:
Approximately 100,000–120,000
Unborn children lost through abortion:
Approximately 66,000,000
For every child murdered by other means during this period, approximately 550 to 650 unborn children were lost through abortion.
Every one of these numbers represents a child.
Not a political talking point.
Not a statistic to be pulled out only when it benefits one side.
A child.
A life that ended before it had the opportunity to grow, speak, learn, love or leave its own mark on this country.
We rightly grieve when a child is beaten, shot, strangled, neglected or otherwise murdered. We demand investigations, arrests, trials and accountability.
That accountability cannot depend on whether the killer was a man or a woman. Compassion for an offender’s history cannot require silence about the child who was killed.
Yet the loss of approximately 66 million unborn children has been discussed using softened language, reduced to politics or defended as a routine medical decision.
The scale is difficult to comprehend.
One hundred thousand murdered children should shake this country to its foundation.
Sixty-six million should bring it to its knees.
These figures are based on FBI, CDC, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and Guttmacher Institute data. The homicide figures are preliminary calculated ranges because the federal government does not publish one complete cumulative total separating adult male and adult female offenders. The abortion figure is based primarily on Guttmacher estimates because CDC figures exclude states that do not consistently report abortion data.
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