And how could you suspect, or *not *suspect, that any particular “miscarriage” was actually an abortion? If you really couldn’t, then **Whack **is right.
If you wish to claim a principle is a moral one, you have to be consistent about it.
Woo! Lookit Bricker dance, dancin’ up a storm, like a dancin’ fool…
Just kidding.
I already stipulated that for you getting a partial victory is a tactical choice on banning abortions. You can’t get everything you want up front so will take incremental steps. Makes sense.
Let’s see your slippery slope in action though:
Say a Constitutional Amendment gets passed tomorrow that defines life beginning at conception. This is not me making stuff up either. Rand Paul wants such an amendment:
*“I would support legislation, a Sanctity of Life Amendment, establishing the principle that life begins at conception. This legislation would define life at conception in law, as a scientific statement.” *(cite)
Now, let’s look at the legal definition of murder:
*U.S. Code TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 51 > § 1111:
Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. *
Or for a state (I will assume most states would be similar):
*VirginiaCode § 18.2-32:
Murder, other than capital murder, by poison, lying in wait, imprisonment, starving, or by any willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing, or in the commission of, or attempt to commit, arson, rape, forcible sodomy, inanimate or animate object sexual penetration, robbery, burglary or abduction, except as provided in � 18.2-31, is murder of the first degree, punishable as a Class 2 felony. *
It occurred to me that in the past when abortion was illegal no one was claiming murder. Now with that amendment abortion = murder. One of the most serious crimes there is.
So, no need to pass special laws and tell me I am doing a Chicken Little imitation. Pass that amendment and voila…start sending the women to jail for murder.
Or wait…we’ll only go after the doctors who perform the abortion right? How does that work unless you think the doctor is kidnapping pregnant women to perform abortions? If you successfully prosecute the doctor for murder you certainly have the woman dead-to-rights as well. How else could you prove the doctor is guilty of aborting the unborn without the woman as evidence? Since she clearly capitulated in seeking and obtaining the abortion (and possibly paying the doctor) she is guilty as hell. A getaway driver is guilty of murder even if he didn’t pull the trigger. The woman in this case is faaaar more culpable than the getaway driver so, under law as written (and assuming the amendment above is law) she is guilty of murder as well.
Or are you suggesting that the DA will just ignore the woman and prosecute the doctor? What if the woman self-aborts?
As for miscarriages remember we are now talking about the crime of murder. Not the crime of abortion but murder and all that entails. If a woman miscarries how will the state distinguish between a natural miscarriage and a woman who claims miscarriage but got an abortion? If they refuse to investigate miscarriages then the whole law is so easily sidestepped as to be useless. Every woman who gets an abortion will claim miscarriage and that’s that…they walk.
So, for the law to be enforced the state has to investigate miscarriages.
Brickerland sounds like a perfectly awful place; particularly if you are a woman living there.
This entire theory rests on the notion that people would sit helplessly by while these laws were enacted.
Support for ending abortion is mixed. Support for the draconian interpretation you mention would be miniscule.
However, I will grant that your statement is correct: if there were an amendment that specified human life began at conception, and no other laws were passed or changed to shape that principle, then both a doctor and a woman procuring an abortion might be charged with murder. Depending on the reason for the decision, they might have defenses available, such as necessity, but the basic charge would be possible.
Unfortunately for your argument, no one is proposing that such a situation come to pass.
I don’t believe if abortion were criminalized all miscarriages would be subject to investigation. However, I don’t think the comparison with other deaths is necessarily valid. An 80 year old lying in bed dies, with no signs of foul play, then there will be no investigation - I think we all agree there.
But the situation with a fetus is fundamentally different. It is using a human being as a life support system - that in and of itself makes a greater likelihood of suspicion. Similarly, if the 80 year old were hooked up to someone as a human dialysis machine, and then died, I think the police would be more likely to look at that person suspiciously. Does it guarantee and investigation? No - but the dependent relationship of the fetus on the mother does create a different situation that impacts whether there is suspicion.
Well, possibly, but not likely. Require a human disalysis provider (or, for that matter having un underdeveloped pair of lungs, along with an underdeveloped everything else, as fetuses have) is a sufficiently precarious medical condition that if someone were to abruptly die with no immediate indication anyone took direct action to cause the death, I don’t expect there’d be a big fuss.
Or at least I hope there wouldn’t be - investigating miscarriages by default would be an absurdly stupid waste of police resources.
So if you (or pro-life people in general) were really serious about wanting to prevent as many abortions as possible, then you (and pro-life people in general) would be advocating COMPLETE sexual education in schools, as well as greater access to birth control for everyone, including teens under the age of consent, and greater emphasis on higher education goals for girls. All of these things have been proven to PREVENT more teen pregnancies than other methods, and to also prevent unwanted pregnancies in later life. Fewer unwanted pregnancies = fewer abortions. However, where I live, the pro-life people are precisely the ones who want to have abstinence-only sex ed, and who want to restrict or even outlaw just about every birth control method except for natural family planning. My conclusion is that they don’t want women to have sex except for procreation. And any woman or girl who DOES have sex “should have to face the consequences”, as they frequently say.
If anti-abortion laws didn’t provide for an out for the mother, per the South Dakota law I cited earlier, I can certainly see that some miscarriages would be investigated. But your analogy is not a good one, as it implies some coercive (or at least neutral) action by the other person. Given that the vast majority of women who get pregnant want to keep their babies, the default position would be that the miscarriage was not intentional.
Am I mistaken, but I thought that the majority of pregnancies spontaneously aborted, usually without the woman knowing she was pregnant? Or am I misremembering high school biology (or more likely was my teacher a freaking idiot)?
Anyway, even if what you are saying is true, then the police investigations will fall on people least equipped to deal with it - as those suffering from pre-natal depression, or who expressed any dissatisfaction with being pregnant, whether because of rape, or child abuse or for whatever reason, are certainly more likely to be under suspicion.
The number I’ve seen is 1/3, as I posted up-thread. But that’s not really relevant to what I was talking about-- the % of women who get pregnant and want to keep the baby being much greater than those who don’t.
I’m not sure those people will be “least equipped” to deal with it. I’m pro-choice and don’t want to see any woman investigated for a miscarriage. The only thing I’m really arguing here is against the crazy notion that all miscarriages will be investigated.
And frankly, the anti-abortion laws that are most commonly discussed in the US, like the South Dakota law, explicitly exempt the woman from any punishment even for elective abortions. So, this whole issue is a red herring, and I’m embarrassed to be on the same side as those who are using it as a scare tactic.
If preventing abortions were the only goal, with all other goals erased, then you’d be correct. In fact, we could go further and say that if preventing abortions were the only goal, we would provide state-paid condoms and publicly-funded Norplants for anyone who wished them, and free medical care to a pregnant woman in order to reduce the worry about keeping the baby.
But that’s not the case, because reducing abortions is one of a number of goals, all of which must be balanced.
Your statement hints at the inference that because pro-life folks do not support borth control, we should infer that their goal is not to reduce abortion.
This argument, if you are making it, is an example of the fallacy of the excluded middle. There is a middle ground that your statement ignores.
If abortion is outlawed, that means that the woman haters have already won. The civilized people might fight, but they’ll lose; if they were strong enough to win, abortion wouldn’t have been made illegal in the first place.
You don’t think a rape or chidl abuse victim is going to be potentially more vulnerable to a police investigation?
But your right - as I mentioned I don’t think all will be investigated, just that an abortion ban certainly makes the investigation of a miscarriage more likely.
Well, with due respect, that doesn’t prevent the possibility of an investigation. The woman in that case wouldn’t be investigated as a criminal, but instead as a witness to the crime of another.
And come on, lets be honest about the motivations here. There is a significant element in the anti-choice movement, possibly a majority, who view abortion as murder. The reason there are exclusions for rape/incest, or statements that the women won’t be held responsible, is not out of sympathy for the women. It’s because they realize it is the only way to get these laws passed. Once we are in a climate of abortion bans, and doctors being prosecuted for providing medical care, then I think we will see how long such loopholes last.
“More vulnerable” isn’t the same as “least equipped”.
Some women, maybe. If you have an abortion doctor performing illegal abortions, you don’t need more than one woman as a “witness”.
Unless the population changes its views significantly, which I don’t see happening, they would last a long time.
Just out of curiosity, what is a valid overall pro-life agenda, with various goals and compromises in place? Is it like 20% in favour of banning abortion, 15% agasint sex-ed in schools (or pro sex ed in schools), 8% in favour of outlawing nude beaches…
What is the “middle ground” you describe where the various goals are balanced?
Since the pro-life movement does not speak with a monolithic voice on these issues, I do not believe your question can be answered with the degree of precision you posit.
I can give you my personal opinion, which is that I favor complete sex education.
Well, feel free to guesstimate.
Most all of the pro-life people and organizations that I know about are for only abstinence-only sex ed, and quite a lot of them are firmly anti-contraceptive as well.
I’d be interested in knowing about some prominent pro-lifers and organizations who are for complete sex ed, and for more widely available birth control, as well.
There seems to be this association of pro-choice with anti-birth control. I’d be interested in seeing some actual date to support that. Meaning, of those who are pro-choice, what percentage are anti-birth control.
I’m not interested in anecdotal information, but in actual data.
Of course, you also know me. So undoubtedly you’ll be leavening your thoughts in the future along these lines, knowing as you do that I am pro-life, yet favor comprehensive birth control.