With the seating of Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court and the passage of anti-abortion legislation by South Dakota this question is moving from the theoretical to the practical.
The fundamental argument of the pro-life position is that human life begins at conception. If this is true, then a woman who procures an abortion is guilty of murder (or, at a minimum, solicitation to commit murder). One would then expect the punishment to be comparable to other crimes of the same magnitude: a long prison sentence, or, in the states that permit it, death. For example, when Susan Smith was convicted of murdering her two small children she was sentenced to life in prison. It seems that if the standard pro-life position is correct then the punishment for getting an abortion should be similarly harsh.
Curiously the South Dakota law only provides for penalties for abortion providers and none for the women themselves. But this doesn’t make any sense. It’s as though a murder law imposed a penalty on the hitman who pulled the trigger but completely ignored the mobster who paid him to do it.
Personally, I’m pro-choice. I don’t believe that human life begins at conception and I think that abortion early in pregnancy should be legal. But I’m curious to hear from the pro-life camp what their position is on the matter. It seems like logical consistency would require that anti-abortion laws should carry penalties similar to the penalties that apply to murder. If not, why not?
If abortion is murder, as some pro-lifers claim, and if every life is sacred, no matter what stage of development, then the only reasonable punishment is death.
There. That should get things heated up real fast.
Wow, this is the kind of stuff you think of on Friday night? I’m impressed.
I’m so far over on the pro-choice wagon that I don’t even look at the middle anymore, but this question intrigued me. A more appropriate “punishment”, IMO, if you really wanted to punish, would be to force them to adopt some other unwanted child. But we don’t really do those kinds punishments in this society! I’m guessing it’d be lots of jail time and heavy fines?
FWIW the proposed anti-abortion law in South Dakota does nto punish the woman but rather those who perform the abortion (except to save the life of the mother).
Here is what a Class 5 felony gets you in South Dakota (I can not tell where or why which of the two listed below are applied so included them both):
So it seems SD does not see this to be quite as awful as, say, first degree murder.
Hasn’t the Supreme Court ruled that sterilization is a “cruel and unusual punishment”? That would make it unsuitable for punishment in abortion cases. And 1000 hours of community service seems rather light for what many regard as murder.
Oh, there will be plenty of them (unwanted children). Also, remember that many of the anti-abortion people also want to deprive people of birth control. Also, they want to stop any and all sex education (just say no??). So there will be lots of unwanted children. But don’t worry, these same people also usually hate welfare and other “social stuff”, so these unfortunate kiddies will quietly starve and no longer be a problem.
Yep, they thought everything out quite well. I think I have the answer. “A Modest Proposal” if you will. It boggles me that in the “land of the free”, you can still have the gubmint stick its nose into our bedrooms, AND tell people (the ladies at any rate) what they can do with their own body.
Well, this might explain why the “pro-life” folk are seeming indifferent to the many, many, many times it has been pointed out that if abortion is banned, women will die in back alley abortions and there will be an increase in infanticides. They’re just following the logic of their convictions, and they’re OK with that.
Wouldn’t this have the effect of convincing them their abortion was the right choice, seeing as it removed the risk of a years-long heartbreaking commitment to a child?
Thinking on this more, if we want to be logically consistent, then punishment for abortion should be life in prison…possibly the death penalty. Why?
Well…
If we accept the premise that abortion = murder then there is no way around this. The above will describe any woman who goes to get an abortion. What’s more, not only does the woman go to jail for life but so does the doctor and nurse who abetted this. Better still we can send anyone who drove the woman to the clinic to jail for life (IIRC they would be like the getaway driver at a bank robbery where someone is killed which I think gets them a murder rap too). Not sure if we can get anyone else in the clinic (receptionist, accountants, etc.).
Depending on the state this may even elevate them to death penalty case. Abort a baby and the State can off a half dozen people!
Oh yeah…that’s the country I want to live in! (sarcasm for the sarcasm impaired)
Women tend to get funny around real-live babies even if they try to pretend that isn’t their thing at the moment. I just figured the fact that they lost their chance at ever giving birth again (sterilization) would be a pretty cruel punishment if you make them immediately go play with babies afterwards. The community service would be spread out over a few years as well for a few hours a week to keep the ideas alive and remorse flowing. Many would become pro-life converts and spread the word.
I don’t actually promote such a thing of course but the relevant community service part is an idea that might have real-life chances in some areas.
Ok, I make no pretense that babies are not my thing, I really don’t get oogy over babies, I dont want babies, I have never wanted babies, and if I could just acquire an 18 year old ready to send to university and shove out of the nest I would be happy. I have nothing against babies, I just dont like drooling, incontinent and incoherent protohumans. When they are housebroken and coherent they become infinitely more tolerable.
I would have been thrilled if I could have at 20 when I haad my tubes tied just had the whole uterus removed and avoided the past 24 years of off and on bloating, bleeding, cramps and a serious amount of cash spent on sanitary supplies, pain killers wasted sick days/unpaid sick days and blood-damaged clothing.
Nope, not every woman in the world has a hankering for kids, disguised or not.
By the way, Did I ever mention that the hospital that the ob/gyn I had was associated with actually let a bunch of asshat pro lifers into the wing … Nothing like being in there at 5 months along waiting to finish losing the kid and being lectured on the EVILS of abortion? Don’t annoy a woman who has hormone induced mood swings from pregnancy. You wouldnt like the results.
There are so many things wrong with your reasoning. Not all women have those feelings. Not all abortions are based on unwanted babies. After a pregnancy, a woman’s hormones need a chance to return to normal levels. How do you know what is pretense and what is not?
How much time do murders really get these days? 15 to life?
It would be interesting to keep statistics to see how many of these protected fetuses eventually become incarcerated for having illegal abortions. Don’t know how you would determine which ones were “protected” by changes in the law though.
This week the Tennessee legislature set in motion a process to change our state constitution so that women are not guaranteed abortions. (They are anticipating that Roe v Wade will change.) The “man” who brought this to the floor said that the decision can be made either by the courts or in the legislature. He wants it to be made in the legislature.
He seems to have forgotten women and their physicians.
(Pro-choice, pro-gender equality in the courtroom, pro-mandatory child support and anti-abortion)
In terms of legal punnishments there are several things that need to be considered. First of all morality needs to be considered, as whatever punnishment that is given needs to be just. Secondly though I think we need to consider issues of pragmatics as well. We should consider not just what is just but also what will practically lead to just outcomes.
One of the main purposes of the anti-abortion law is to obviously stop women having abortions. There are two ways that you could go about it. One is to harshly punnish women who have abortions such that the threat of punnishment outweighs the desire for an abortion. The other way is to harshly punnish the abortion providers such that even if a women wants an abortion, none are willing to provide her with one and so it becomes impossible.
Of the two options I think that the second is by far the more preferable. Firstly I would say that abortion providers are just as, if not more so resposible for the death of the foetus. Secondly there are no significant mitigating circumstances which help lessen the severity of their crime. The women themselves involved in the abortion are often under a lot of stress and emotion, and thus their personal involvment in the situation, while not excusing their actions, does at least help to explain them. The same cannot be said for the abortion providers, many of whom are merely profiting off the misfortune of women.
So I would say that we should treat abortion providers quite harshly. Women who have abortions I think should not be exempted by law, but I think that either their penalty should be relatively minor (community service sounds good) or that the judge should have discertion in deciding between a major and a minor sentance depending on whatever mitigating circumstances there are.
And before someone asks I would not be in favour of investigating every miscarraige or whatever. Simply because we don’t know what causes miscarraiges, and they do happen naturally, and so absent any other evidence there is no proof that a crime has been committed.
First off the whole backyard abortion thing is a total fallacy. What caused the majority of backyard abortions was infections that turned fatal. Ever since the invention of antibiotics the risks due to infection plummeted, as did the risks due to illegal abortions. Directly before Roe vs Wade there were relatively very few deaths from illegal abortions simply because with antibiotics fatal infectinos were quite rare. Secondly abortion technology today is not what it was 30 years ago. With the advent of things like RU486 I would suspect that most backyard abortions would involve smuggling in and administering RU486, of which health wise the pro-choice people will tell you there are relatively few risks, especially since it is a non-surgical procedure. The whole argument that outlawing abortion endangers women through backyard abortions just doesn’t hold water, and is more about emotional hysteria rather than actual facts.
Secondly there is no proof that in the US banning abortion would increase infantacides. In a country where it is relatively easy for a person to give a child up for adoption, why would someone kill their child rather than just give them up for adoption? If they are going to go to the trouble of carrying the baby to term anyway, why kill it then rather than just give it away.
But even if it did increase the rate of infanticide, so what. The pro-life position is that the child is human from conception. So whether it is aborted or killed just after birth to the pro-life way of thinking a human life has been ended either way. If banning abortion lowers the abortion rate below in the increase in infanticide then that is still a net gain in lives saved, which is a positive.