Generally speaking, I’m really uninterested in other people’s moral beliefs unless they want me to do something about it. If you believe that drug use, pre/extramarital sex, abortion, or rubbing blue mud in my navel is immoral, well whoop-de-do.
If you don’t want to make abortion illegal (Bob Cos, beagledave), then I really don’t care how you think. No offense, I’m think you’re great guys (and good debaters), but issues of personal preference really don’t hold my interest.
If you do want me to do something - make something illegal or pay for something - you have to appeal to my own morality. If our moral stances differ, but converge practically at some point, this is an especially powerful technique.
For instance, you might feel that a fetus is a human being. If you attempt to reason from that premise, I will reject your conclusions, as I don’t accept the premise. However if you appeal to my desire to to spare living people suffering, you can most definitely appeal to my own morality to reduce unwanted pregnancy, and thus reduce abortions.
The other method of convincing me to do something is to show that my personal morality is inconsistent. This is usually a poor method, because anyone can rationalize special premises to make their own morality consistent. In fact, I have observed the more extreme and bizarre a particular philosophy, the greater the tendency to rationalize ad hoc premises to support it.
How do you reduce abortions if so many pro-lifers are against birth control, like IUDs? How do you reduce unwanted babies if some religions refuse to accept birth control of any artificial form?
What was the old penalty for illegal abortions?
Me? I figure the radical pro-lifers who like to bomb clinics and their cohorts should be rounded up and publicly shot.
I don’t know how relevant this will be to the American debate, but in Canada the penalty used to be up to life imprisonment for a person carrying out an abortion, and up to two years for a woman who underwent an abortion. (Criminal Code, section 283 (1) & (2)).
I would argue that this makes you a Pro-Choicer. I certainly think abortions are WRONG and would never have one personally (besides the obvious fact that I’m a male). However, I don’t think that that they should be CRIMINAL, which is neccessitated by making them illegal. It isn’t my job to legislate the morality of others.
So, the Republican Party supports “legislative and judicial protection” of the right to life of the “unborn child”, but doesn’t support any punishment for mothers who have abortions. Presumably, though, they do support punishment for someone, i.e., doctors who perform abortions. The platform also doesn’t specifically define “unborn child”, but the right-to-life movement seems to generally define human life as beginning at conception. The GOP’s support of extending 14th Amendment rights to unborn children (however defined) would seem to logically undermine some of the rest of their position. If unborn children (however defined) are to be given equal protection under the 14th Amendment, then the premeditated killing of such a person (that is, a person as defined by the propsed Human Life Amendment to the Constitution) would have to be treated the same as the premeditated killing of any other person. You could hardly pass a law providing that the intentional premeditated killing of, say, left-handed people, is only a misdemeanor. And if a mother hired someone to kill her 1-year-old child, she would of course be tried for first-degree murder, and quite likely sentenced to death (along with the contract killer, of course). The “14th Amendment” standard would also seem to destroy the “rape and incest” exception which many mainstream pro-lifers embrace. After all, you could hardly pass a law making it legal to kill the children of men guilty of certain violent crimes. (Incidentally, there was an on-line article–I think by Michael Kinsley in Slate–which made many of these same points; I can’t seem to find it, or I’d link to it.)
I realize that this isn’t an answer to the posted question, but consider it anyway.
Would you want George Washington and THomas Jefferson imprisoned?
I ask because both were wealthy slaveowners. Since virtually all of us (save the occasional odd Klan kook) believe that slavery is repugnant, and it is now illegal, I ask you: do you think Washington and Jefferson were evil, and if so, how would you have punished them?
No it doesn’t really answer the question at all. Pity, 'cause it’s an interesting question - much like the previous asking of why pro-lifers with the stance that from fertilized egg up is a human with human rights would allow abortions in the case of rape.
Slavery wasn’t illegal then, so obviously they weren’t punished, and won’t be punished. Even if it had been made illegal in their lifetime, they would only be punished if they had continued to hold slaves.
Back to abortions, pro-life supporters probably would hold forth that women having abortions now should not be punished simply because it isn’t against the law.
But the thread is about what the punishment should be if pro-life forces get their way. I’d still like to see if the charge would be involuntary manslaughter (3rd degree) or murder (1st). It doesn’t seem likely they’d use 2nd degree since rarely are abortions done without careful thought.
Well, all I know is I’m moving to Sweden if it happens.
I’m not really sure what the relevance of this is. As far as I know, not even the hardest of hard-line anti-abortionists favors digging up women who had abortions in the Revolutionary War era and having them shot. However, I think it’s fair to ask if the anti-abortion movement (or a major segment thereof) wants to gradually transform our society into one in which a woman who takes the RU-486 pill is sentenced to a lengthy prison term or executed. Which is, after all, a perfectly logical interpretation of the ultimate consequences of positions taken by mainstream, respectable pro-lifers (we’re not talking about the Army of God here, we’re talking about the Republican Party platform).
I read somewhere that there is already some protests by pro-lifers about the new abortion pill.
I have a solution. Let all of those women who don’t want their babies be paid by the pro-lifers to have them and then give them to the pro-lifers to raise. This would have to be at the Mother’s discretion, of course.
Better still, lets work on transplanting a fetus. That way, any pro-lifer protesting an abortion may have the fetus, at their expense, removed from the mother and placed into one of them! Then they can have the responsibility of birthing and rearing the child.
A third option is to get the pro-lifers to start fighting the religious right, which is blocking the general teaching and advertisement of birth control products and effective sex education in schools. Make contraceptives available to those under 18. Then, there would be less abortions!
Stop the killing, which is designed to stop the killing (makes sense, doesn’t it?) and bring back freedom of choice for women.
After all, it is their bodies.
Maybe pro-lifers would like us to build Pregnancy Prisons, where women seeking abortions can be contained, forced to deliver, then released.
Gee…what should be the punishment for destroying a building…killing people etc…
I don’t know of any of the pro life folks who have posted in these threads who would be opposed to prosecuting anybody who blows up buildings and kills/maims people…I don’t see what being pro choice or pro ife has to do with that…unless of course, one wishes to group all pro life groups into one nice lunatic, fundamentalist, uncompassionist bunch…
This can’t be surprising to you. What did you expect, that millions of people would all of a sudden lose their voice on what is arguably the most controversial moral issue of our time?
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It’s called adoption. Last time I checked, pro-life people are all for it.
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I think the jury is still out on the effectiveness of sex education. There are several different curricula that can be used. I think pro-lifers are more in favor of programs that empahsize abstinence. As for your last claim, in many school districts contraceptives are available. In any town with a Planned Parenthood (or other) clinic, contraceptives are available. And free. Mom and Dad need never know. This may or may not lead to fewer abortions. Teenagers are not the most responsible of our demographic groups.
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Well, perhaps I’m missing something, but your first statement lost me. And last I checked, women do have freedom of choice.
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I’ve never heard a pro-lifer recommend a “pregnancy prison.” Maybe this whole post is hyperbole on your part. Is the best you can come up with is overblown statements and exaggerated misrepresentation of the pro-life position? If so, that says a lot about the validity of your position.
Back on topic… MEBuckner says:
To answer your first question…no. I hereby go on record stating that the “major (pro-life) segment” does not lengthy desire prison terms or execution for women who undergo abortions. As I posted above, and others as well, the theoretical punishment for mothers would be different from those of doctors who performed an abortion.
In fact, when abortions were illegal in (most) of this country, I would be willing to bet that the punishment for doctors was much more severe. I’m not sure if there even was a punishment for the woman. When Louisiana drafted an anti-abortion law in the 80s (never enacted), IIRC, the punishment for the actual performer of the abortion was 10 years. I do not recall any punishment for the woman.
I disagree with your claim that it is a “perfectly logical” extention to assign the ultimate punishment to a woman seeking an abortion. Please refer to my previous post for another logical extention. See the part about a consideration of circumstances as a mitigation (or partial mitigation) of guilt.
If abortion were to be come illegal, I think it is perfectly logical, and desired, to focus legislation/punishment at the person with the scalpel, suction machine, salt solution, coat hanger, etc. I will be honest and say I don’t really know what the proper legal approach should be as far as the woman herself is concerned. A blanket punishment is useless. As I also posted before, a consideration of circumstances could lead to widely varying legal consequences, none of which would approach lengthy prison terms or execution.
You know, it’s interesting that the legalization of abortion has also resulted in a reduction in the size of state orphanages.
I seriously doubt that the pro-life forces which support adoption of the child would have the resources to adopt the resulting children should all the aborted pregnancies be brought to term.
That’s an additional 1.37 million. Wonderful. A whole new population boom. And, in all likelyhood, a new increase in understaffed, underfunded, state orphanages churning out kids with screwed up lives.
I like his other idea more. It’s not unreasonable that within a short period of time we could save a reasonable number of viable embryos from abortions.
Heck, not even all the cells would be necessary. Just enough of them to eventually develop into a new child. After all, until recent developments in stem cell research, that’s where most of the tissue for experimentation came from.
Then, simply put those cells on ice, and wait for the throngs of pro-life supporters to surge forward to have them implanted in their own bodies (ooh! One more reason to push for male pregnancy research!).
(listens to echoing silence - hm. pregnancy as punishment for immorality?)
After all, beagledave mentioned before that he considered current fertility clinics where many fertilized eggs are unused to be a problem. I recall a massive protest a while back by pro-life minions when one fertility clinic was about to discard many of these eggs (they had been on ice for too long, and were degrading). None of them volunteered to be implanted themselves. I don’t seem to recall, either, any acknowledgement of the likely result of using such degraded eggs. Miscarriage, or birth defects being very real possibilities. One wonders why they didn’t line up at the hospital years before when the eggs were first stored.
This sort of thing leads to ridiculous problems. It’s as bad as the proliferation of births of quintuplets recently. Humans haven’t evolved to have litters! The usual pattern in nature is a ratio of two breasts for each pup in the average litter.
People take fertility drugs to release multiple eggs, then refuse to remove two or three of the fetuses, often on religious grounds. Result: low birth weights, endangered lives of mothers, dead babies (not fetuses or embryos - dead at or after birth), and massive expenses by the hospitals. Oh, and a whole heck of a lot of publicity.
This is off-topic from the OP, but I do want to give my opinion in response. It always bothers me when the abortion issue goes from the question of rights to the realm of economics and population control. If you want to debate the issue on women’s rights, privacy, or medical ethics, that’s one thing. But when the debate turns to how we as a society should not allow undesirables to cause any more burden to our social systems, that to me starts to descend into more dangerous territory. Sure, there will be a cost to society if every baby were brought to term. Your taxes might even go up.
You seem to see 1.37 million as a population boom of those that could be considered undesirable, unwanted, or otherwise too “screwed up” for our society. I see them as 1.37 million children. Who knows of their potential? Certainly not all will be poor wretched creatures better off dead. Extended family support systems (grandparents, cousins, etc.) may be able to absorb a few of these kids. Adoption certainly a good many. Churches and other charitable organizations could take care of a subset, either directly or indirectly (through funding).
As for the rest? Yeah, the State would have to get involved even more. Especially for those that are not “healthy white babies” (the undesirable of the undesirable?). Not an enviable position, to be sure. But better than dead, I would think.
Every year, Congress debates allocation of funding. What does it say about us as a society if we would rather see 1.37 million lives snuffed out because of funding considerations? My advice is to go back to debating on the other issues (women’s rights, privacy, or medical ethics, etc.). It serves your side better.
On the latter post, I must agree. Every time I look around what used to be my low density city, low density neighborhood and see all of the crowding and growth, it bothers me. Then along comes some lady on TV, beaming as she holds 4 or 5 newborns. (I can’t help it. I keep thinking of such births as litters.) Aside from 5 new people being injected into the population at once, I cringe at the amount of expense, labor and problems raising 5 new kids will bring to that family.
A little time with an abortion device could have made things, legally, so much easier.
Before abortion and the pill, many women had the joy of popping out a kid a year because horny husband couldn’t keep out of the nooky. Families of 8 kids was not unusual. He probably wanted lots of kids, but mostly did not consider the strain on her.
I watched a program on TV the other night. Seems a lady needed to have an emergency abortion. Her hospital refused to grant permission for it. She had a couple of choices: let it go, develop an infection, spontaneously abort and probably have to have her uterus removed, have a damaged baby born or have the baby die and spontaneously abort the dead fetus, which could affect her health. Her outraged doctor paid to have her taken by taxi 40 miles to the nearest hospital which would abort.
Did I make ANY suggestion whatsoever that this was a racial issue. I request an apology please.
That’s a 50% increase in the number of births per year.
I seriously doubt any of these infrastructures would be prepared for that.
Yeah, every birth is unique, each with unknown potential. Certainly they will have more potential, though, if the resources are available to look after them.
And of course this isn’t counting the presumed millions more that we will never know about because the fertilised egg never got implanted due to birth control. U.S. population statistics are finally stable. It is to a large part due to the Pill, which induces many abortions (if you count a fertilised egg as the magical stage at which there is suddenly a human life - I won’t be surprised if some pro-lifers carry this to the next stage and decry every period that goes by that an egg disappears to its doom, unfertilised).
There was never any agreement that it is 1.37 million lives. In third world countries the birth rate is a major social problem. “pro-life” forces seem determined to provide North America with the same quality of life.
I think that quality of life is a crucial issue, and I would be very interested in seeing how you would budget for the enormous strain on society a world where every fertilised egg was brought to term would be.
BTW, I’d still be very interested in seeing where you’d locate the 1.37 million pro-life women who would be willing to have a birth every year just to preserve these eggs. And of course, we’ll need a few million more to bring to term the fertility clinic eggs, the IUD prevented implantations (wouldn’t it be nice if IUDs of the future can gather the eggs for pro-lifers), the fertilised eggs lost to the Pill.
Extreme pro-life is the height of logistical insanity in this over-populated world. I would be more inclined to agree, perhaps, with those who limit their position to more developed fetuses.
