My appologies if this has been covered, but what happens to the children?
If women are not allowed to have abortions and do not want the child, what is to become of it?
Who is going to raise the child and who is going to pay?
My appologies if this has been covered, but what happens to the children?
If women are not allowed to have abortions and do not want the child, what is to become of it?
Who is going to raise the child and who is going to pay?
I don’t want to reinvent a dead horse here, but can’t even one pro-lifer go through Blalron’s list? It’s what the thread is for, after all.
:dubious:
I look at susanann’s position - and it seems to be motivated by hate and desire for revenge rather than love. Surely anyone so concerned for the lives of unborn babies would also be concerned for the lives of living women?
How anyone so strongly anti-killing or anti-murder can be in favour of the death penalty for these women - even the raped women, the teenage women, the women who risk their own health by carrying to term - is just bizarre. When as others have pointed out, there are clearly other penalties, such as imprisonment. We don’t even sterilise or castrate or kill rapists and murderers, so why these women?
Despite the presence of some seemingly compassionate pro-lifers on these boards, I cannot believe susanann’s position is motivated by anything other than fantatacism, desire for control and hatred. Please note that I am attacking her position and her beliefs, not her. She may well be a very kind, good person as an individual. It is her belief system that I find both worrying and abhorrent.
And if a woman has seven embryos created via in-vitro fertilization and only uses two and discards the rest, should she be executed for killing five people?
Thank you for your polite and well spoken opposition to my belief on the death penalty.
I do understand that many/most people, today, are against the death penalty. I can accept that we disagree on this issue.
Hate and revenge, as far as I can say for myself, have nothing to do with sentencing a convicted murderer to death, it is just. I believe that murderers are mentally sick, and it is thru “compassion” which I believe that it is best to put sick murderers out of their misery, but ending their lives.
Others may have reasons of hate and revenge for wanting the death penalty, I do not.
I dont “hate”(nor seek “revenge” on) the murderer of presidents Lincoln or McKinnley, I do not hate the Manson family, the murderer of any police officer, the murderer of Jon Benet, the murderer of my neighbor, the murderer of Laci and Jordan Peterson, or the murderer of a baby.
I dont believe any murderer can be rehabilited(if he could someday mentally understand what he has done, he would commit suicide once he realized what he has done because a mentally capable/stable person could never be able to live with himself after being cognizant of what he did)
The issue of sentencing the death penalty, is a separate topic.
Some people/states believe in the death penalty, and some do not.
I said at the beginning, that some states currently do not allow the death penalty for murder, and in those states they would have to give life without parole to baby murderers, just as they can do now with any other murder. Therefore, my position of giving the death penalty for baby murderers is only for those states which currently allow the death penalty, and those states that may change their laws to someday give the death penalty.
I believe in a mandatory death penalty for certain crimes, such as murder-1, child rape, treason, assasination of the president, etc. There is no point in your “worrying” about some people who believe in the death penalty, you arent going to change the minds of those who do believe in it.
Blalron -
Well, nobody seems to want to answer your question. I’m actually pro-choice, not pro-life, but I’d like to take a stab at it. Assuming that the goal of the legal framework about which you’re asking is to reduce the number of abortions performed, as opposed to being purely punitive, what I would suggest is this. First of all, I would not define abortion as murder, and certainly not as murder in the first degree. Our (hypothetical) purpose is to lower the incidence of abortion, not slaughter thousands of confused 18-year-old girls.
The laws would target the health care professionals more than the actual subjects of the abortions. Women convicted of having an abortion would be subject to prison terms, of up to 10 years. The judge would have extremely broad discretion in assigning this sentence; the wealthy socialite who has her fourth abortion because she fears a child might impinge on her lifestyle might receive the maximum sentence; the confused 18-year-old girl mentioned earlier, who had the procedure but has expressed remorse and is adjudged unlikely to be a repeat offender, might be sentenced to probation and counseling.
A physician who performs an abortion would be sentenced to a term of 5-15 years in prison (perhaps more), massive fines, and of course lose their license to practice medicine in any of the United States. The goal here would be to make it financially unfeasible for any legit doctor to perform an abortion.
This might drive women to pursue abortions via the “back-alley,” you say? Fine. The penalty for anyone other than a licensed medical professional who performs an abortion is 25 years to life. As a matter of course, prosecutors offer significant breaks to women who recieve abortions via this method (say, 6 months probation) in exchange for information leading to the arrest of the person who performed it.
I cannot think of an appropriate penalty for women who self-induce abortion. The penalties for “back-alley” abortion would seem to apply, but are far too harsh… I’d prefer to prosecute these women as if they had received an abortion from an independent “provider,” ie, up to 10 years.
Because this is the real world, cases where the child is endangering the life or health of the mother are exempted. Physician experts would be appointed by the state to determine whether such risk exists. However, I can’t see any logically consistent way to exempt cases of rape or incest - if the fetus is a life, it’s a life. Period.
Furthermore, my projected framework also places a significant amount of money into a massive campaign aimed at easing the burden the new laws would create. Educational and counseling efforts for pregnant women, informing them of non-abortion choices, would be created. In addition, women with real financial need–unemployed teens, single moms with other children already in the house, and the like–would be eligible to apply for “maternal aid” in the form of grants and/or low-interest loans; these funds would cover the early costs of child-rearing.
I should say for the record that the system I describe above is unpalatable to me, because I don’t believe that abortion should be illegal at all. But, given the scenario imagined by the OP–abortion IS illegal, design laws to enforce it–this is how I’d go about it.
- FCF
Don’t forget that the whole premise of this thread is bizarre. In a world (movie trailer guy) where pro-lifers were in charge, people would be like kangaroos - fetuses would be in a pouch and they would actually be accessible from the outside, where unwanted ones could just be easily removed and handed over to authorities to raise in incubators. There’d be no need for a woman to choose abortion, so Susanann’s executions would rarely need to be carried out. In our world, where fetuses are not so easily accessible, pro-lifers will never be ‘in charge’.
susanann - thank you for clarifying your beliefs. I stand by the fact that I find your beliefs extreme to say the least, but I also respect your right to hold them.
Susanann-by any chance, do you have a degree in psychology?
** Susanann **–Would you please answer my question above. What about embryos created by in-vitro fertilization. Is my sister guilty of murder and should she be executed?
That’s what I’ve been wondering.
If by rehabilitated, you mean function in society, I think a fairly large chunk of the 30 million women who have gotten abortions have functioned in society pretty well.
Your definition of rehabilitated is “to kill oneself out of guilt”, which differs from my own definition of “to restore to health or usefull life.”
I believe that most women who get abortions can lead meaningful lives in the future.
With all due respect, I believe your position is taken for mostly punitive reasons, not out of compassion.
An 18 year old girl who got scared and got an abortion is not incurable. Try talking to one sometime. Really. Sit down and talk with a woman who has had an abortion, then come back and tell me that she is incurable and should be put out of her misery like she’s a horse with a broken back.
Trying to change peoples minds about things like this may be a lost cause, but I think that lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.
I have already answered this point, and Blalron specifically, on several occasions in other threads. I don’t believe it’s a meaningful exercise. Blalron has rendered a list of activities completely devoid of circumstance and asked what the range of penalties should be. How is that remotely answerable? You want a range? OK, somewhere between nothing and life in prison. And I’ll point this out as I always do, varying penalties is an attribute consistent with virtually every other crime on the books. Circumstance is always a critical factor, one that can lead to drastically different penalties for exactly the same act.
This is just my opinion, but OPs like this imply a “gotcha” that is simply specious–i.e., if one can’t spell out every logistical detail associated with a ban, then, by golly, you have no business holding such beliefs. A ban is absolutely practical and effective. They were so as recently as 1972. There were significantly fewer abortions, and we somehow avoided the execution of millions of women every year.
Law enforcement and communities would find the most efficacious means of enforcing such bans, just as they always do. Societal reaction to specific instances would influence the severity of future penalties, just as it always does. Judges would help ensure that inappropriately tough sentences were not the norm. This is also just my opinion, but I believe that society would not be sending many women who had illegal abortions to prison.
This is precisely what I was asking you to do when I listed the activities.
I’m asking you to write the different circumstances, and how those different circumstances affect the punishment.
In case you were not aware, this is how laws are written. They list the different elements of the crime, including the level of intent. If there are any circumstances which justify the conduct or make the penalty lesser, those are written into the law itself.
I’m asking you to pretend like you were a Congressman who is in the committee assigned to write the new anti-abortion laws. YOU are asked to write what the different circumstances are in your law.
I’m trying to figure out how far some of you are willing to go to prevent abortions. If Susannas point of view is an accurate reflection of the pro-life stance, it doesn’t look good.
Even before Roe vs Wade, I don’t think that any of the States actually executed any women for getting abortions. If somebody has a cite that says otherwise I’m sure they will be along shortly to provide it.
The crucial difference is that women right now, in 2003, are accustomed to having control of their reproduction and are going to be resistant to having that right taken away from them.
Before Roe vs Wade most of them were not accustomed to that concept, so they didn’t resent having a right taken away that they never had.
No prison? Probation and psychological counseling then? What about troublesome repeat offenders? Will there be a “three strikes and you’re out” provision?
Since I believe that life begins at conception, the penalties would be the same as for any other murder.
If it is life, it can’t be taken.
I know you think its wrong, but not all wrongful taking of human life is treated the same way, either by most people morally or by the law. There are certain circumstances which making a killing more wrong and less wrong.
Does the fact that this human is incapable of feeling pain and is unaware of its own existance and is completely dependent upon draining the physical resources of an unwilling host to survive have any impact AT ALL on how this wrongful killing should be punished? Even the teensiest tiniest bit?
When I was young boy, my mother said “stealing is wrong, whether you are stealing a paper clip or the Statue of Liberty!”
My reply was: Ok, that may be true, but does stealing a paper clip deserve the same punishment as stealing the Statue of Liberty?
I think the same principle may apply here. Killing may be wrong, but not every killing is on the same level of evil.
rem: Fetus = Baby, latin.
rem: State posters state " better to care for your unborn child… your baby before it is born, get prenatal care…"
of the same state stating: “…legal termination of a fetus”…
hmm
when money and free care costs are involved = “baby” is the word… hmmm
(All) Note:
Are you questioning the life/death of a baby with a right to choose, -relative to penalties for acts~
or just acts around living ‘fetal tissue’ ?
Where you start here is the real question #1.
(All)Lastly, for now,
why pick at the unfinished phrase of “pro-life” not remembering= pro-life of the unborn human child, or being"
and not compare such picking at
“pro-choice”
arguing hypocracy to what is the phrase “pro-choice”-of the mother
vs
“pro choice of the unborn baby being, still in a womb”
Just judgement here requires a moral of determining definitions of hypocracies, meaning that one has a morality from someone or somewhere, (not self induced) to even declare a hypocracy about anything, let alone this thread of penalties, or thread of pro-life decision making.