The real reason the law never, or seldom, prosecutes women is easy to ascertain. The problem is the unborn child is an “abstract” human being in a psychological sense. Regardless of all the flames directed at this assertion, it is nonetheless true. Pregnant women often see their developing child as “part of their body” and not as a person.
This is why fetal sonograms are not required as a form of informed consent prior to abortions. The reason being a woman who views such a sonogram and sees the child as a child, will often (but not always)avoid the abortion.
Deeper down we have the problem of the fatal dualism of human beings. That is, we are a combination of a biological body and what seems to be a divine sense of being that includes a sense of perpetuity. Without evidence of this divine aspect of humanity, the woman seeking an abortion thinks only in biological terms—this is not a person but a biological developing organism.
Those who want to hate and punish abortion perpetrators, including women, besides having to punish what seems to be an secular abstraction also must explain why in the present day US that over a million women (14,000 alone in Minnesota)do obtain abortions. A wildly popular procedure based on seeing a developing child as an abstraction and not as a person. Very hard to find secular laws to enforce what seems to be an abstract crime.
Soren Kierkegaard was certainly not a Roman Catholic; however, he pointed out the fundamental clash in human nature was between our biological nature and the seeming Godlike “I” or person we experience. One destined to deteriorate and die and the other ? In Kierkegaard’s thinking, avoiding the “dread of death” was the primary conflict man faced. His solution was theological even though his approach was psychological. It did include “natural law.”
>> [Abortion] can only be rendered acceptable by an energetic act of self-deception.
I agree with your remarks how abortion is wrong in the context of Natural Law. I often argue abortion is a humanitarian issue and less that of a religious or political one. Proponents of abortion may in fact need to energize themselves to a state of self-deception, but I also think indifference is natural to the character and disposition of many abortion advocates.
Still yet, it’s absolutely necessary that politicians and religious leaders speak on behalf of the unborn. As is the Natural Law that claims to defend the unborn, it is equally natural for people to demand leadership on issues like these in order define how they should behave. Oddly enough, common sense isn’t sufficient to spare the life of those that are denied the opportunity to share one innocent glance with those who created them and will inevitably kill them.