No it’s not. If there were buildings where people took their children to be killed, thousands each day, and the government did nothing to stop it, it would be justified to blow them up and kill a few of the murderers with them. Or, sorry to Godwin, if there were Nazi death camps…
The terrorist anti-abortionists are the only ones who actually live up to their true beliefs. The rest sit on their butts and say “abortion is murder and millions of children die every year!” and then watch reruns of Frazier and forget about it.
Not everything is worth violently fighting against. But wouldn’t you say that if there were hundreds of children being sent to death camps every day in your town, and the authorities refused to do a thing about it, it would be worth killing a few of the murderers to stop it?
There is no reason why women shouldn’t be held liable for getting an abortion were it illegal. The world has gone completely insane.
I’m “pro-choice” and it’s not just the right that’s being hypocritical about this, the left is also when Clinton is aghast about punishing women for getting abortions. If abortion were illegal of course women should hold some responsibility.
If abortion was illegal and they didn’t attach a punishment to the mother who seeks an abortion wouldn’t that be a bit like saying it’s ok for a mob boss to put out a hit on someone as long as he doesn’t pull the trigger?
Who would take such a silly position? What moron would think it’s okay to tell people to rough someone up, and promise to pay their bills, and – hey, wait a minute.
Leah Libresco’s stuff is invariably super-smart, but her first post there actually suggests that punishing women who get abortions along with other people (the doctor, and presumably anyone who paid for/encouraged the abortion) is not actually that much of a fringe position, about 30% of the people surveyed share it.
I think abortion should be punished as a lesser crime than murder, for a variety of reasons, but I do think that everyone involved with it (the doctor, the mother, and anyone who financed or encouraged her to have the abortion) should face some legal punishment, unless there’s evidence she was coerced (and I have no doubt a lot of women are coerced). To do otherwise is to take all moral responsibility away from the woman involved.
The reason the pro-life ‘movement’ (for which I don’t really have a lot of respect) doesn’t support laws of that kind is because Americans have inconsistent moral intuitions and don’t fully follow the logical imprlications of their principles, and tough anti-abortion laws that punished women who have abortions wouldn’t play in Peoria.
why do you believe that women are coerced? and why do you believe there is any moral responsibility?
Science tells us that fetuses aren’t babies until well into the third trimester.
The Bible tells us that fetuses are property, not babies.
The Bible tells us that “life begins when the baby begins to breath air.”
Not everyone believes in the Bible, but in our country, we have laws against forcing odd religious beliefs on other people.
Women have every right to decide what to do with their own uteruses.
Therefore there is no moral responsibility for a woman deciding to empty her uterus during the first and second trimester. It is her right.
I think your statement that women are “coerced” into having abortions is insulting. Women are perfectly capable of making decisions on their own about their own bodies, their reproductive futures, their possible and actual children, and their own medical decisions. Many women fight tooth and nail against parents, relatives, and sexual partners in order to get abortions that are right for them.
If women are being coerced into having abortions, who is doing the coercion? The men who got the woman pregnant? The parents of pregnant teenagers? Do the pro-life advocates who feel women are victims feel these people should be arrested?
Over in Northern Ireland, a young woman was given a 3 month suspended sentence for procuring drugs online to abort a fetus. She couldn’t raise funds for a trip to England, which is what is usually done. She was 19 at the time of the abortion.
Such prosecutions are rare: [INDENT][INDENT]Before passing sentence, the judge said there were no guidelines or similar cases to compare this to, adding in his experience there have been no other prosecutions under this specific piece of legislation - namely Section 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
He said the legislation was 150 years old and had been substantially amended in England, Scotland and Wales but not in Northern Ireland. [/INDENT][/INDENT] I don’t have a good sense of how anti-abortion law works where it is practiced, so I thought I’d share this.
Hector_St_Clare: Nice closer reading - I didn’t look closely enough at the survey results.
