# Pro-lifers: What should the punishment for getting an abortion be? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 11, 2006, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899 "2006-03-11T00:54:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/21 "2006-03-11T03:54:24Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > He seems to have forgotten _women_ and their _physicians_. What would a woman and her physician know about making decisions concerning her pregnancy? That’s for big, important men to decide! ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/22 "2006-03-11T03:59:13Z")
> [@Stagger Lee](#): > > 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. I just realized something. This could make abortions more accessible to many women. Think on it: Many women don’t have access to abortion providers without a lot of travel, sometimes two days necessary to get the procedure, plus the expense, plus the preaching and the gauntlet running, plus the public nature. Shove it underground, the pipelines for smuggled RU486 become bigger, it could easily penetrate markets where a clinic couldn’t survive, no publicity, no preaching, no gauntlets, no major travel. Interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/23 "2006-03-11T04:00:53Z")
> [@Stagger Lee](#): > > First off the whole backyard abortion thing is a total fallacy. …(stuff elided by EC) … 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. C’mon, women still die of pregnancy itself, it just beggars belief that a surgical interruption of pregnancy won’t kill women in some nubers. I don’t know how many, but you can be sure there will be some … enough to satisfy “pro-life” bloodlust? I dunno. > [@](#): > > Secondly there is no proof that in the US banning abortion would increase infantacides. Oh, please. Even with abortions still available in the US, you still read about babies being found in dumpters and bathrooms. The notion that this phenomenon wouldn’t increase without abortion as an option is ludicrously stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Spongemom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@Spongemom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spongemom)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/24 "2006-03-11T04:36:31Z")
> [@Stagger Lee](#): > > 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. [Baby](http://www.kron.com/Global/story.asp?S=2058636)[Baby](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/10/BAG9F7JB6R1.DTL)[Baby](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/12/BAGIOGLV8I1.DTL) [More babies](http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/ca/story/14150732p-14978940c.html) (For some reason, I can access this link through a Google search, but when I click it on preview, it takes me to a log in page. My Google search was “California dead babies found”, and that was the second link.) That’s only in one state, California, and only 5 minutes spent on Google. I can only imagine how high those numbers would be if abortion were illegal and countless more unwanted children were born. ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Bruin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Queen\_Bruin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Bruin)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/25 "2006-03-11T05:10:01Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > Shove it underground, the pipelines for smuggled RU486 become bigger, it could easily penetrate markets where a clinic couldn’t survive, no publicity, no preaching, no gauntlets, no major travel. > > Interesting. Tell that to women in Ireland that have to save money, then beg off a few days from their employers, then lie to their families and government so they can go to Britain to get an abortion. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/26 "2006-03-11T05:14:50Z")
> [@The Sausage Creature](#): > > Tell that to women in Ireland that have to save money, then beg off a few days from their employers, then lie to their families and government so they can go to Britain to get an abortion. I’m sorry, what am I telling women in Ireland? ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Bruin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Queen\_Bruin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Bruin)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/27 "2006-03-11T05:18:43Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > I’m sorry, what am I telling women in Ireland? That abortion in a country where it is illegal will become more easy to obtain because of the black market. Or did I miss something? ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/28 "2006-03-11T05:23:19Z")
> [@The Sausage Creature](#): > > That abortion in a country where it is illegal will become more easy to obtain because of the black market. Or did I miss something? I didn’t say it would. I said it could. I am not in any way for it, and as I know nothing about Ireland, I wouldn’t dream of telling the women there anything other than fight like hell and kick the fuckers out. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/29 "2006-03-11T05:27:02Z")
Thanks for engaging, **Stagger**. > [@Stagger Lee](#): > > As an actual pro-lifer, let me say what I think, > > … > > One of the main purposes of the anti-abortion law is to obviously stop women having abortions. But just how important is it to stop abortions? Carrying a fetus to term is a serious physical and psychological burden. If we are going to force a woman against her will to take on such a burden then society must have a strong compelling interest in doing so. For example, we don’t force people to donate their kidneys even in situations where doing so would save a life. In order for us to be morally justified in imposing such a duty on a pregnant woman the need must be grave indeed. Anti-abortion protesters have provided us with that grave need. They argue that from the moment of fertilization the growing mass of cells represents a unique human life. The snuffing out of this life is so great an evil that it justifies whatever curtailment of individual rights that we must impose on the woman. This is a reasonable argument – we regularly curtail the rights of others in situations of compelling public interest. But if abortion is so great an evil then justice compels us to punish the guilty. > [@](#): > > 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 involvement 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. How do you feel about a woman taking RU-486? In that case there is no “abortion provider”. Would you say that a woman in that situation should be given a minor penalty, or should she be given the same sort of punishment as a woman who poisons her newborn? > [@](#): > > 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. I feel there’s a slippery slope at work here. If you excuse a woman who has an abortion because she’s stressed and emotionally fragile, couldn’t you make the same argument for a woman who murders her newborn? If the life of a fetus and the life of an infant are morally equivalent, then doesn’t such leniency lay the legal groundwork for infanticide? Personally I find it horrifying that a mother who intentionally drowns her baby in the bath might get off with nothing more severe than community service. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/30 "2006-03-11T05:39:48Z")
> [@Stagger Lee](#): > > 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. Criminalizing the second option has some unique undesirable effects. If there is a dollar to be made history shows over and over again that someone will step up to take that dollar. Where there is a demand a supply will fill it even if it is illegal. Just look at the drug wars. All sorts of draconian laws that have filled our jails to the breaking point and yet no real victory in drug use can be claimed by the government. Sure drug use ebbs and flows but with little regard to what law enforcement is doing. I think you underestimate how desperate some women may become when faced with an unwanted pregnancy. Particularly “good girls” in middle or upper classes for whom the stigma is rather large (sadly in many poor areas pregnancy among young women is viewed more as a status symbol but that is another thread). Many of those young women will seek to terminate their pregnancy. Be it a do-it-yourself termination via drugs or a coat hanger or trying to find a back alley doctor it WILL happen and expect to see some young women die or be permanently damaged by the effort. Another downside, and to me perhaps scariest of all, are doctors faced with a women in the hospital who is pregnant and the pregnancy may be killing her. How many doctors are going to step up to the plate and terminate a pregnancy when faced with serious felony criminal charges? Mind you medicine, as much of a science as it is, is also an educated guessing game. I think the black & white cases where a woman can be wheeled in to an emergency room and the doctor can state unequivocally that her pregnancy is killing her is rare. More likely is it is a complicating factor. Where do doctors draw the line? The pregnancy may be complicating the woman’s issues but hey…she might pull through! Then again she might have a heart attack but we’ll wait till it happens before doing anything. See the problem? Whatever the doctor does in this hypothetical they are screwed. Treat the woman and lose the baby and they are up for felony criminal charges and have to prove their innocence in court. Don’t treat her (at least in ways that would save her life but lose the baby) and she dies the doctor is open to a massive malpractice suit (not to mention I bet they feel like hammered dog shit for having things play out that way and the woman dying). > [@](#): > > 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. That is cool of you to say so (really…not being snarky) but in reality you can see the problems inherent here coming. Essentially it would be a loophole. If “miscarriages” are not investigated then you will see the incidence of “miscarriages” rise sharply. People will get bent out of shape by this and ultimately if a woman loses her baby she had better have proof (don’t ask me what that’d be…I have no idea) that it was truly Mother Nature and not her doing. FTR I am firmly pro-choice but I do find abortion problematical. I wish abortions never happened but not because we made it illegal and crucified mothers and their doctors. It’d be because either every baby was a wanted baby or pregannt women were content to carry their baby to term and give it up for adoption. And yes I know that is idealistic beyond reason as well as ignoring profound issues (e.g. it is not emotionally simple for a mother to give birth and give up her baby she just carried for 9 months) but a guy can dream. ---
**Author:** ![aurelian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@aurelian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aurelian)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/31 "2006-03-11T05:46:23Z")
> [@Stagger Lee](#): > > \ > 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. Or, you could promote sexual education and facilitate access to affordable/ free/ covered by insurance birth control, right? Wouldn’t that “stop women having abortions”, too? > [@](#): > > 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. _No_ mitigating circumstances? So, the doctor who performs a treatment to save a woman’s life and the doctor who performs a treatment on a woman who does not want a child for the most vapid, self-serving reason imaginable are morally equivalent and deserve equally severe punishment? ---
**Author:** ![aurelian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@aurelian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aurelian)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/32 "2006-03-11T06:05:33Z")
Oh, I don’t mean to hijack your thread, **Pochacco** , but I had just read about this very question on another blog. [This](http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_03_05_atrios_archive.html#114183891789058381) is a link to a transcript of Chris Matthews and Pat Toomey. I have not seen the show in question, but in the fragment, Matthews seems to be trying to pin down Toomey’s position on abortion and its consequences, without much success. Oughtn’t the father be punished too, perhaps as an accessory? (erm, no pun intended 🙂 ) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/33 "2006-03-11T06:36:16Z")
> [@aurelian](#): > > Oh, I don’t mean to hijack your thread, **Pochacco** , but I had just read about this very question on another blog. It’s not really a hijack. This particular meme is popping up a lot on progressive blogs lately. It’s a serious question. We have a number of people in this country who are pushing hard to criminalize something that has been legal for the last three decades. I think an essential part of the debate has to be what punishment will be attached to any new anti-abortion law that are on the books. The problem is that the primary justification for banning abortion (abortion is murder) doesn’t sync up with the punishments that are being proposed. Either abortion ISN’T murder and the entire right-to-life movement is built on sand. Or abortion IS murder and we need to start locking women up. I don’t see how you can split the difference on this one. > [@](#): > > Oughtn’t the father be punished too, perhaps as an accessory? (erm, no pun intended ) Well … yes. If he drives the woman to the clinic or gives her the money to have it done, or probably even if he knows about it and does nothing to stop her. The same would hold true of the woman’s family and friends. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/34 "2006-03-11T07:09:38Z")
> [@Pochacco](#): > > Well … yes. If he drives the woman to the clinic or gives her the money to have it done, or probably even if he knows about it and does nothing to stop her. The same would hold true of the woman’s family and friends. I think **aurelian’s** comment, while meant to be funny, also touches on something often overlooked. This whole issue drops the entire burden 100% on women. That might be fine if women reproduced asexually but they don’t. The male is at least 50% responsible for a woman being pregnant. In the case of rape he might be considered to be 100% of it occurring. Yet after that it is the woman who bears 100% of the responsibility or carrying the pregnancy and all its issues. In an ideal world the father will step up and help her carry that burden but if he bolts it is all hers (assuming it wasn’t a rape of course). To some extent society has tried to address this by forcing fathers to at least pay child support (if nothing else) but while it is a start it still falls FAR short of the support a woman could do with and deserves in this position. Now we take away a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy (assuming abortions are banned). We make her even more a slave to her own biology. She gets pregnant she had better hope the father is a good guy because she is STUCK. Yet the males really get away rather light in all of this. Go figure. If there were true justice in all of this the male who impregnanted the woman should somehow share in whatever happens to her. No idea how that would reasonably work but it seems only fair. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/35 "2006-03-11T07:43:37Z")
I don’t think there ought to be a punishment for women who get abortions. At least not a legal one. [As I’ve said in the past](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=350094), I think _it’s possible_ that such an act might keep you out of heaven. If it turns out that I’m wrong about that, and it’s not murder after all, it’s definitely not something that a legal punishment is appropriate for. It’s one of the subset of “crimes” I’m content for the necessity of punishment to be sorted out after all - literally - is said and done. (others would be things like ‘suffering a witch to live,’ polygamy, or bestiality) I think the purpose of legal punishment is to give a criminal a good reason not to commit the crime again, and there are few “serial abortion seekers.” On the other hand, I wouldn’t be adverse to health care providers strongly advising (but not legally compelling) women who have had two or more abortions to seek sterilization. I know a lot of people are under the impression that all pro-life people are anti-birth control, but it’s just not true. A lot of us are able to divorce morality from religion and believe in other crazy things like moral atheists too. Peview is our friend. But ‘suffering a wife to live’ is funnier, isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/36 "2006-03-11T08:36:05Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > I don’t think there ought to be a punishment for women who get abortions. Do you believe there should be a punishment for doctors who provide abortions, or do you believe the procedure should remain legal? ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/37 "2006-03-11T12:00:08Z")
I had an abortion last year. It was a very personal and very difficult decision, and I was glad for the laws in the Netherlands that facilitate choice, and that, by the way, have resulted in the one of the [lowest percentage of abortions in the Western World.](http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/index.html#ST) So yes, please tell me what punishment you think I deserve. ---
**Author:** ![Gala\_Matrix\_Fire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4da419/32.png) [@Gala\_Matrix\_Fire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gala_Matrix_Fire)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/38 "2006-03-11T12:14:15Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > This is an inappropriate punishment because you are also punishing the “unwanted child” by placing it with someone who doesn’t want it. Isn’t that exactly what happens when you force a woman to carry and deliver a baby she doesn’t want? Oh no, wait, **Shagnasty** has explained to us that women loooooves the babies and as soon as they get their paws on a real one, they turn into pudding and love it and cherish it. Understood now. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/39 "2006-03-11T12:44:39Z")
> [@](#): > > 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. A possibility is incarceration during the time when while a fertilized egg is implanted in her and carried term and delivered to a couple who could not have a baby on their own. ---
**Author:** ![aurelian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@aurelian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aurelian)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899/40 "2006-03-11T13:47:11Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > A possibility is incarceration during the time when while a fertilized egg is implanted in her and carried term and delivered to a couple who could not have a baby on their own. To take this at face value… From here (PDF file) It is critical to understand that the ADP represents the average daily population and that > [@](#): > > Forty five Wisconsin county jails\*, or 62.5% were operating at or over 80% of actual capacity in 2002, meaning that more than half of Wisconsin jails are “overcrowded.” [80% of “true capacity” is “maximum capacity”:] Reasons for this include the need for management flexibility, sufficient bed capacity to cover seasonal or weekend confinement peaks, the set-aside of additional space for inmates with special needs (e.g., waived juveniles, suicidal or mentally ill inmates), and allocation of jail capacity according to other meaningful categories (e.g., age, sex, or pretrial sentenced.) In the past few years at the UW, undergrad tuition has gone up 40% and the state has been giving the UW System less money every year (and I haven’t had a raise in five years…not that I’m at all irritated about that). And we’re going to spend even more money on _jails_ for pregnant women? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-lifers-what-should-the-punishment-for-getting-an-abortion-be/347899.md?page=3)