Posted on 04/06/2016 4:55:25 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Abortion is unique because pregnancy is. The fact that an unborn baby resides entirely inside the body of another human being with rights of her own makes mincemeat of our whole approach to justice, which is based on individual rights, balanced against the rights of others and the claims of the common good.
Yes, the baby has the right to life, but the mother has the right to control her body, too, so how can we disentangle the claims of two people who literally inhabit the same space, eat the same food, and are intimately related? To what else can we compare this situation: Siamese twins? A stubborn, unwanted tenant? A famous violinist who needs to share a healthy person’s organs, whose fans have kidnapped her and hooked the two together? Since no other relationship is exactly akin to pregnancy, all analogies finally fail. Abortion has no prefabricated answer, but requires the careful needle of a custom-tailor statesman.
Donald Trump in his blundering way put his finger on the core difficulty yesterday when he asserted, and then denied, that pro-life laws should include legal penalties for the mother. His flip-flop probably was what his rival Ted Cruz asserted: the kind of reversal you go through when you really think about an issue for the first time in your life.
Or maybe Trump has faced the question before. He has publicly boasted of sleeping with uncounted women — many of them the wives of other men. What are the odds that not a single one of these women became pregnant, and came to him for answers? Some reporter should ask him about this, perhaps with this tactful formula: “Mr. Trump, given the thousands of women you claim to have had sex with, how many abortions have you demanded or paid for?” Given Trump’s willingness to drag his opponents’ wives’ medical histories into the campaign, this question seems fair game to me.
For those of us who, like Senator Cruz, have been pro-life for decades, the issue has already vexed us: We know that abortion is homicide and are willing to punish the doctors. Indeed, I’m in favor of quite strict punishments for abortion profiteers. But since the woman who hires the doctor is the primary author of the decision, does it really make sense — as all prominent pro-lifers have prudently chosen to say — that we would never punish such a woman? What’s the logic there?
Well, the first logic is political. We know that treating women as exclusively the victims of abortion, and never as its author, is absolutely critical to passing any pro-life legislation. So we’re willing to overlook the moral inconsistency, rather than let the “best” be the enemy of the good. In the same way, most pro-lifers reluctantly make an exception for genuine victims of rape, who never willingly took the risk that their body might be on loan for the next nine months. We don’t like it, we know it doesn’t quite embody justice for the unborn, but we fear that such is the best law we could probably ever pass and really enforce.
The problem with the rape exception is obvious: We don’t have the death penalty for rapists themselves, so why should we impose it on their children? There is no satisfying answer, but you could ask the very same question about a pregnancy that directly endangered a mother’s life: That child is just as innocent. It isn’t as if he were trying to kill his mother…. We acknowledge the wretched messiness here and try to pass the least bad law that we can.
So no, it wouldn’t be perfectly fair to severely punish doctors who provided illegal abortions, while completely absolving the women who sought them out and paid their fees (not to mention the ne’er-do-well boyfriend who drives her to the abortionist, happy to be relieved of the burden of a newborn making the case for him growing up and becoming a responsible husband and father). At the same time, there is a real difference between a woman who hires an assassin to murder her husband, and one who procures an abortion. The obvious difference is that the first woman has other options for getting away from a husband, however abusive. A pregnant woman can’t escape her pregnancy, however unwanted or traumatic, without taking an innocent life. Many, perhaps most women who make the lethal choice of abortion are terrified and desperate. The decision itself does them grave emotional, spiritual and even physical harm. Any one of these factors would be enough to mitigate the remaining punishment that might be called for.
In fact, the most productive and compassionate approach to this vexing question may be this: We decide as a society to stigmatize abortion as such a desperate, self-destructive and irrational act, that it cannot be treated as grounds for a criminal prosecution of a mother. Instead we will treat women who go outside the law to end their pregnancies the same way we treat people who attempt to commit suicide. We might mandate that they get help, in the form of counseling — instead of leaving them to face the crushing guilt without support, as Planned Parenthood leaves the young women who fall into the organization’s clutches today, shooing them out the door after taking their fees and selling their babies’ organs. We would waive all charges against a woman in return for her help in prosecuting the doctor. As to him, he should get the same legal treatment as Dr. Kevorkian, the ghoulish suicide doctor.
This answer isn’t perfect. Some will say that it infantilizes women by treating their (im)moral choices about their pregnancies as pathological. It’s not a great answer for women who repeatedly decide to have illegal abortions. But it’s the closest thing to a fair solution possible in our degenerate society.
“Trump disagrees with Trump on the issue”
I disagree with myself on the issue.
Jennifer Whalen, a mother in Pennsylvania, was prosecuted for getting abortion-inducing drugs for her daughter. Purvi Patel is currently sitting in an Indiana prison for allegedly self-inducing her own abortion. And it’s not just abortion. Prosecutors have charged dozens of women with serious crimes including drug trafficking and murder for using drugs while pregnant. When South Carolina passed a law in 1997 qualifying fetuses as persons and harm to them as child abuse, the Attorney General’s Office announced it would prosecute women who had post-viability abortions for any reason, and that it would charge them with murder and potentially seek the death penalty. If a woman takes drugs and has a miscarriage or her child dies soon after birth, she faces jail time in many parts of the U.S. Do we really believe that a woman who pays someone to end her pregnancy won’t be treated the same way?
When you make something illegal, it comes with penalties—this is how criminal law works. It’s certainly how it works in El Salvador, where women are in jail, some for having miscarriages the state believes were abortions. It’s how it works in Rwanda, where rape survivors sit in prison for ending their pregnancies. It’s how it works in Ecuador, Malaysia, Mexico, Bolivia, the Philippines—the list of where ending a pregnancy can land you behind bars goes on.
Not me, and not Zmirak.
Mary Pizzingrillo, a Garden City nurse said she's supporting #TrumponLI because "he's very frank..not a politician"
Mrs. Don-O, it has been one hell of a mess here on the forum as the Cruz folks continue to shill for a man that has no way to a legitimate nomination.
Sorry if you got caught in the collateral, but some of us are not in a forgiving mood any longer.
It’s time to fight back as good as it is being leveled out against us and our candidate.
That’s what you’re going to see from here on out.
They wanted war. It’s full on war.
“Trump was right, being a willing accessory to murder should be punishable accordingly. Is it political suicide to admit this in today’s America? Yes.”
“His flip-flop probably was what his rival Ted Cruz asserted: the kind of reversal you go through when you really think about an issue for the first time in your life.”
That would explain the reversal. Trump does always think before he speaks (an understatement) Having thought about this for many years, I would prosecute the providers but not the women. Maybe my opinions about women who seek out abortion are naive but it seems to me that at least a good portion of them will suffer later in life for their decisions.
You posted a week old article.
Absolutely right. Amazing how some people twist things to suit their agenda. Speeding is illegal and you will get a ticket for doing it. I guess in their mind the cop should just look the other way. Now abortion isn’t illegal, but the question posed was would you enforce the law if abortion were illegal.
How would liberals react to this.
If guns are made illegal, should a person caught with a gun be prosecuted?
I wish trump had said “women who have had an abortion should not be president”
The baby growing inside her is not just an appendage of her body. It is a SEPARATE body that is dependent upon the mother, yes, but that only exists in that state because of the conscious decision of the mother to have sex. The baby has its own blood supply, separate from the mother's. It can also have a completely different blood type. And of course, it has it's own heart, lungs, etc.
I see this as no different than if someone were to make a conscious decision to grab someone and fling them over the edge of a bridge, and then with the victim hanging there supported only by the perpetrator's grip on their hand, the perpetrator decides to let go exclaiming as the victim plunges to their death, "Oh well, I have a right to do what I want with my body and I didn't want to use MY hand to hold on to them anymore." In both cases, there is a very conscious decision to engage in a course of action that put them in that situation in the first place, followed by a refusal to acknowledge their resulting responsibility to the other person.
And all of that is aside from the incredible injustice of allowing the mother to decide to kill her baby without the permission of the father. The father contributes most of the genetic information (if you're only looking at it from a liberal, pragmatic point of view), and is every bit as much the baby's parent as is the mother. Yet, men are simply discarded from the equation.
Of course, the real bottom line is simply that this practice is evil and its acceptance and celebration poisons society and warps the moral sensibilities of a great many people.
Yes, he was correct. It is pure logic. Now the extent or severity of the punishment is a completely different discussion.
Then I submit we must leave it to God to administer the penalty, otherwise, are we not ourselves engaging in an abomination to God, by pretending we know for a fact what God's judgment will be?
In fact we must prevent ourselves from becoming an abomination in God's eyes, by allowing him to mete out the appropriate punishment.
The punishment question was based on if abortion were made illegal again. It was playing so well that most of the media failed to make the distinction as the firestorm wore on. At least the Guardian was honest about it.
I don't know what they did to women before Roe vs. Wade who procured or performed abortions. I thought at least the doctor might have had his license yanked and possibly some jail time.
I never heard of any woman being punished. If something is illegal, there should be consequences. I wouldn't consider anti-abortion laws unjust or morally objectionable. The doctor, immoral as he might be, has to be engaged by the woman to perform the abortion.
I feel uncomfortable punishing her personally or collectively and yet I believe it is wrong. I certainly would encourage her to repent of the sin and get right with God about it. How do you get right with yourself? Some women don't care and others suffer the grief their whole lives afterwards. What a conundrum.
What Trump might have said to the reporter:
“So, you’re asking this question, right? I mean: you’re bringing up this idea that women should maybe be punished? Because that’s not any sort of idea that I was going to bring up. But you, the media, want to raise this important idea that – if abortion was illegal – perhaps women would be punished? Well. Let’s see …
“So, we’re starting with the idea that abortion is illegal? That’s your starting point? That’s where you want to begin? And I guess you are supposing that a woman is pregnant, and she wants to get an illegal abortion. That’s what she wants. So, she has to find a doctor who will perform an illegal abortion. That might be difficult. Because they are illegal, right? But, if the woman really makes an effort, I guess she could find a doctor who was willing to break the law. And then what?
“Well, She’d go his office. She’d make that trip, right? And she’d write him a check. She’d pay him. She’d say, “Please perform this abortion – which is illegal – do this, and I will pay you to break the law on my behalf. And after the operation, she would leave. I guess she might even thank him for doing this illegal act, because it’s what she wanted. It’s what she asked for. It’s what she paid for. So, she’d thank him and then go on home. So … what was your question?
“Oh, yeah: would a women – if abortion was illegal – would a woman who made such a strenuous effort to break the law possibly be at risk for arrest and legal prosecution for conspiring to have an abortion, and participating in the abortion. Could she be punished?
“Of course. That’s the way all laws work. Next question?”
Right or not it was perhaps the dumbest thing I’ve seen in this campaign. It eclipses Carson’s going home to Florida blunder.
His taking multiple stances on it in just a few hours showed that he never thought it through and exposed his pandering about being pro life.
Yes, usually. Let’s first focus on the 99.9%+ that are retroactive out of hedonistic convenience.
This is a very slippery slope. Should this attitude be extended to murder in general?
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