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.
You are delusional
Well..., one of us sure is.
If you can point out something wrong with what I just said, I’d sure like to know what it might be.
You’re OK with using tax dollars to support people and an organization which has played a major part in the murder of 55 million babies.
Compromise like you are making or more evil then anything the gop has done.
I guess I should have known better than to think you could read English sentences and comprehend them.
Please point out one thing I said you disagree with.
I’m waiting.
I’m not making a compromise.
I am speaking out against evil, and in support of services provided in remote places where women don’t have an alternative for health care.
You are so consumed by your dislike of something we both share a dislike of, that you lose rationality.
I want those to participated in selling body parts to be placed in prison.
I want those who provide services to women in remote areas to be available for those women.
If you can provide a way for those women to have local services, I have no problem ending Planned Parenthood there.
Until you do, they need access to health care locally.
Oh it’s obvious what you are saying. And it’s obvious you are lying about Trump’s positions.
More of those new York values?
You poor thing.
Sit there stewing even though we both wish to see abortion numbers approach zero.
Teenager believes her lib parents who are ex-employees of planned parenthood (now out of business since abortion is illegal) who have convinced her that her life is in danger as a result of the pregnancy, even though it isn’t. Pregnancy terminated at 2 wks.
Daughter gets 4th degree Misdemeanor. Fined $100.00.
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Not if the fine is 3 years in jail and 100,000 dollar fine.
The job of the executive is to enforce the law. They may not agree with it, but they still must carry out their oath. It is the job of the courts to interpret and render decision of the laws. So, to answer your question, yes, the person caught with a gun should be prosecuted IF GUNS WERE OUTLAWED. The liberal answer would be to not enforce the law. Just like Obama did when he decided not to enforce DOMA. Just like the prosecutor in San Francisco does when he/she decides no to prosecute drug laws. Just like the liberal sheriff in Yuma who refuses to enforce immigration laws. If the law is unfair or idiotic, it's up to the courts/voters to repeal it, not the executive branch.
Really, has he told you this himself? What exactly is he busy doing?
Then you wouldn’t punish murder?
You're making a leap there. While you and I may believe that life begins at conception, others do not share our belief. So to them it is not murder until after someone is born. But the reality is the justice system has to sometimes accept the lesser evil to combat the greater evil. Just a fact of life.
But in reality what you are fighting is the pro-life stance on the issue, and they have accepted that stance for one reason. To stop the abortionist, for without the abortionist, abortions do not occur.
Murder and abortion while both are taking what you and I see as life, are not viewed that way by others. Murder is the taking of a life already present. So it is not a slippery slope at all because we can all agree on murder.
This is BTW, the pro-life stance. They accept this as their stance because they have rationalized that it is better to view the woman having the abortion as a second victim, in order to eliminate the abortion provider. In their view if they can eliminate the abortionist, than abortions will become unavailable.
I prefer to be consistent. BTW, I prefer to call myself anti-abortion rather than pro-life. I think pro-life/pro-choice is a false alternative fabricated by the MSM and uniparty to deflect from the actual issue.
God will punish them......He does not like his Presents to be returned to Him, unopened.....He will NOT be mocked.
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