[Swordfished]

Of course we don't call for her execution, we would rather see her restored and whole. We preach forgiveness from sin, not vengeance.

What about murderers & rapists - do you want to see them restored on the principle of forgiveness? Should we abolish all punishment and open the jails? That is a quite unbelievable position.

It is not demonstrable that killing fetuses is killing persons. Not even evangelicals act as if it were. If so, a woman seeking an abortion would be the most culpable person. She is killing her own child. But the evangelical community does not call for her execution.

The above point from the article, earlier stated by Michael Medved, is a brick wall that people will keep running into, until they take a consistent, logical position on this.

Murder is murder, or it is not. Murder can't happen without a culpable murderer.

[Swordfished]

What would you say if a mother intentionally gave their 2-year old child a fatal dose of pills so that her child died in his sleep that night?

Would you preach forgiveness, not vengeance?

It is said by some that abortion should be as egregious a crime or worse. Why the inconsistency in dealing with the would-be criminal?

[sobieski]

Natural law says that life begins at conception. It’s also what science says. The liberals say that they determine when a person is created. That, however, is metaphysics. So let’s stick with science, not the liberals religious beliefs

[Mrs. Don-o]

Let me propose this as a possible analogy (imperfect, but in a limited way applicable): drug abuse. The law routinely makes a distinction between a user (especially a young, first-time user) and a pusher. Yes. the user is guilty of breaking the law, but he's also in a significant sense a victim who is in the process of ruining his own body and mind for somebody else's profit. Therefore the user can sometimes avoid criminal penalties altogether if he signs himself into rehab: his penalty is therapy + probation. The pusher, by contrast, and rightfully, gets slammed.

Yes, I realize a crucial difference because in abortion, the doctor and the pregnant mother are killing a third party, the child.

However, if the purpose of the law is to improve the security and well-being of infants before birth, the only practical way to do that is by eliciting the support of the mother, since it is impossible to protect an unborn child unless his mother has both the will and the means to protect him. The child's security cannot be produced by pressure on the woman, but it can be significantly helped by the extirpation of the abortion operator and the abortion industry.

On the other, hand, if the purpose of the law is to exact strict penal retribution --- well, that has a certain abstract logic. But it couldn't be done, politically, in the USA, because the prolife movement is vastly Christian-dominated, and the Christians wouldn't support it.

You'd be more successful advocating this in, say, the Islamic community. They don't have to contend with the example of a Savior who shamed and turned away the stone-wielding men, and then said to the woman, "Go now, and sin no more."