I can’t imagine the religious conservatives putting a perceived Child-Murderer to work in a day-care centre.
Maybe infection, and other health-risks inherrent in back-street abortions, would be a sufficient punishment for the crime.
I don’t know why I find it so hard to believe and accept that there are people right here on this very message board who would read The Handmaids Tale and think to themselves “What a utopia!” and yet, here they are.
Please tell me why any pro-lifer would find the society described in Handmaid utopic anymore than a supporter of the legalization of drugs would find Brave New World utopic or a supporter of the government ownership of major industries would find 1984 utopic.
This is one reason that, while I oppose abortion on religious grounds, I’m not in favor of it being made illegal. You can’t punish doctors who perform them, because that will just result in women getting abortions without doctors, which is worse. Punishing the mother is problematic as well; I have compassion for women who feel like abortion is the only or best option available to them and I also don’t like the idea of punishing people for actions that many or most people don’t believe is wrong, even if I think it is.
If that’s fighting the hypothetical and I have to name a punishment that would be appropriate, I’d say some kind of required class on family planning/contraception. Kind of like when we make reckless drivers attend a safe driving class for a day.
If you’re going to be so idiotic as to make it illegal, you might as well go all the way and hang the women.
Actually we should burn them at the stake as heretics.
Given that the central argument of the pro life movement is that fetuses are humans, and that terminating one is an act of murder, I don’t think it’s necessarily unfair to assume that pro life advocates would support punishing abortion to the same degree we punish various forms of homicide. Weeping Wyvern’s practical considerations aside, how do you justify such a light sentence for abortion, from a pro life view point?
Death penalty. I think after they see a few of their wives, sisters and daughters in the gas chamber the pro-lifers will have a change of opinion and we would be able to legalize it again.
The woman should have that infant taken from her, and not allowed to have another baby for at least 9 months.
A one-dollar fine, payable in installments of a penny a year.
I’m shocked at how parochial so many of the posts are.
Any punishment that doesn’t take into consideration the facts and situation involved will be substantially wrong most of the time.
The problem with holding the man liable is that he may not have consented to the abortion.
There are people RIGHT HERE IN THIS THREAD talking about what they would like in “an ideal world” (in other words, their utopias) that match almost word for word what happens in that book. Forced labor camps. Death penalties for doctors. Etc. It’s scary.
I don’t remotely see how having fewer women get abortions, but a bigger percentage of them be without doctors, could possibly be worse than fewer women have abortions, but all of them have them done by doctors .
I’d have some punishment for the mother, at least in some cases, but I’d punish the doctors (at least when the pregnancy poses no serious medical threat to the mother) more harshly.
I really like this idea.
Penalizing doctors isn’t going to be enough to deter women from getting abortions. Especially in the internet age. A few clicks of the mouse will provide you with all the DIY information you could ever want.
If abortion were to be made illegal on the grounds that a foetus is a person, then for the sake of consistency the punishment should be exactly the same as for the murder of any other person. Any other option is clearly ridiculous. The doctor and the mother have clearly conspired, planned and executed the murder together, and will be punished accordingly.
This will see the brutal imprisonment of many women. Perhaps some cases capital punishment, if a woman gets away with it several times.
There will be international outrage, there will be sanctions and either the US would come to its senses again or the whole thing would simply implode. Oh and hopefully all the wonderful intelligent women will run away to the civilised world triggering the sudden realisation that it was all a terrible, terrible mistake. Oopsie, please come back, beautiful, nice women? Pretty please?
Abortion could be made illegal, indeed criminal, without the woman, the potential mother, having to be punished at all. It would be the abortionist who would be subject to punishment.
Isn’t that, in fact, how it was back when abortion was illegal?
18 to 35 years of hard labor.
[Foghorn/] That’s a joke, a joke. I say. Laugh. [Foghorn]
Abortion is a human right. Punishing the women who opt for it and killing the doctors who perform it is Taliban level of oppression. We get it that the supporters of patriarchy don’t approve. Too bad. Lovers of women do.
I’m The Second Stone and I approve of abortion and this message.
I believe the laws would (or should) prohibit performing an abortion, not *getting *one. No penalty whatsoever for the woman.
Women that have abortions are punished enough in that I don’t think anyone who decides to terminate a pregnancy does so without a little amount of guilt, grief, or remorse. When the procedure was illegal, women went through punishments of risking bleeding to death, infections, perforations of organs, permanent sterility, etc. In the 1960s, one could always find a non-medical person happy to assist.
I, too, am under the impression no woman has ever been indicted for having an illegal abortion. Even today, some people have to travel long distances to find a legal clinic since those ridiculous laws in some states were enacted that shut down clinics.
I cannot imagine going back to those times in the 60s. Makes me ill.