Thank you, Arcite; Like Jackmannii, who I also quote above, I have often wondered how anti-abortion folks who want to punish the doctor but not the woman square that circle. It is not a matter of logic; it is a matter of belief. Or cognitive dissonance, I guess, if you want to get all sciency about it.
Thing is, that means women are dim-witted drones susceptible to the wiles and temptations of wicked men because they lack (for lack of a better term) the cojones to stand up for themselves. A picture that I think a lot of non-Evangelical women (and maybe a lot of them) would object to.
Having been raised a Catholic (where even the most modest of birth control methods outside abstinence and the rythum method are proscribed), I never understood the reasons for blocking any and all methods of prevention conception, since that obvliates the need for abortion,except in the unusual circumstances noted.
It is a puzzlement. I am happy this discussion has stayed rather sedate, most others I’ve read in the past tend not too.
Oh, I absolutely believe it. Listening to some conservative acquaintances, blacks only primarily vote Democratic because they’ve been tricked, women have been hoaxed into thinking they have a right to certain things, people only side against the GOP during government shut downs because the media is deceiving them, only “low information” voters vote Democratic – basically every Democratic/liberal victory is the direct result of a giant scam and hoax and never because anyone rationally thought about their options and went with the blue team.
I can easily see where this mindset transfers over to women making choices about their bodies.
Actually, if you listen to the whole interview, Trump spends most of the time trying to dodge the question and saying he doesn’t know what should be done. It’s only after CM presses him again and again and again that he finally relents and says there should be some punishment.
I’m glad you made the thread. I came here to ask about this very thing. Am I understanding correctly that Pro-Lifers want to make abortions illegal while not punishing the women who have them? I’m pro-choice, and I don’t understand this at all. How…I don’t even know…how does that work? If getting an abortion is illegal, then if you get one you should go to prison. How do you get a free pass? It doesn’t make any sense at all. (Which I guess I should have expected.)
They targeted abortionists, not women. Which, again, doesn’t make any sense to me. Which is why I asked. So, I’m not sure where you’re going with this inquiry. Help me out.
You asked how it worked, so I pointed you to a time where that was the norm. It’s simply a matter of how the law is written-- it’s illegal to perform an abortion.
Think of prohibition. It wasn’t illegal to drink alcohol, or even illegal to make your own (though there might have been a limit)-- it was illegal to sell it.
Right, but if I pay some biker $1000 to rough up my dick neighbor and the fuzz find out, I’m going to prison for that. If I hire a prostitute, same thing.
I guess my thinking is, if your stance is abortion = murder, how is the woman not on the hook for paying for one? How do you reconcile that? What is the reasoning? That’s what I’m asking. By “How does that work?” I didn’t mean how did it work before, I meant how do you even get to that position.
But the point is, the law doesn’t have to be morally consistent. The law is just the law. So we have a law that makes it a crime to pay a hobo $500 to kill your business partner. We also have a law that makes it a crime for anyone to kill anyone. But the only reason it’s against the law to pay someone to kill someone is because we passed a law that made it a crime. If tomorrow we repealed that law, it would be illegal for the hobo to stab your business partner, but it wouldn’t be illegal for you to hand him the money and tell him to do it. It would be a bad, incoherent law, but so what?
Some countries have reformed prostitution laws such that paying someone for sex is a crime, but accepting money for sex isn’t a crime. So the johns go to jail but the prostitutes don’t. Making it against the law to perform an abortion, but not against the law to have an abortion would be perfectly possible, and in fact has been the law in the past. Just because it’s not logically consistent doesn’t mean it can’t be the law.
That’s the only thing that gives me hope for a Trump (gag) presidency. I know he really doesn’t care about a lot of the right wing social issues but has to address them to get elected. If he is ever in the White House I bet the topic of abortion will never enter his head.
I was about to argue with you, because I grew up in fairly conservative church and went to church camps and such, and remember that women were to blame for sexual immorality when they didn’t dress modestly enough and thus caused lust in men’s hearts. Or if a woman were alone with a man and things progressed too far and the woman didn’t stop it, it’s her fault because it’s just natural for men to want sex and pressure women for it. But I guess that still fits with what you said, it’s just that the woman is dumb for not realizing what she’s doing as well as innocent, she’s still put on a pedestal. I guess the logical extension of that thinking is not whether to punish the woman or not, it’s why that men should be in charge of anything if they’re such monsters constantly tricking or forcing women to do things.
I think you’re still looking at it from the wrong angle. I think socially liberal people take it as almost axiomatic that social conservatives are misogynistic, and so when confronted with contrary evidence, tend to reinterpret it to be consistent with misogyny. The fact that women actually get duped by these vile men is not seen as stupidity or lack of cojones on their part, but rather, as proof of just how evil and duplicitous the men are.
I’ve never been Roman Catholic, but I assume they would just say “two wrongs don’t make a right.” But I think a lot of pro-lifers today don’t even care. Decades of opposition to abortion in a world in which mainstream opinion has slid further and further away from their own, has led them to become almost a fertility cult. All that is required for them to be happy is a pregnancy followed by a live birth. Notice how social conservatives have gone silent on one of their former key issues, unwed motherhood? Look at the glowing approval they bestowed upon the Palin clan in 2008, with their unwed pregnant teenage daughter.
I guess my main point was that they don’t take the position they do just because of political expediency; they really believe it. (As opposed to Donald Trump, who, as it’s correctly being pointed out, is taking his anti-abortion position because of political expediency. He knows that in order to be elected to office as a Republican, you have to say you’re pro-life.)
It makes sense if the woman is a victim who deep down doesn’t even really want an abortion but is being pressured into it by the insensitive cad who got her pregnant.
The reasoning is that the woman, being naturally good, doesn’t even want an abortion. She wants to marry the guy and have a family and live in a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a golden retriever, but he, being the lustful rake that he is, sweet-talked her panties off with promises of love and romance, and then left her high and dry when she got pregnant.
Obviously I wasn’t there, and your experience was what it was, but I wonder whether you’re seeing things differently in hindsight. Were women really said to be “to blame for sexual immorality?” I didn’t grow up in such an environment myself, but based on things I’ve read, the impression I have of such people’s attitude is more like “hey, girls, it would be best if you helped the situation out by dressing modestly,” but still the one who is actively doing something sinful is the dirty, disgusting, sex-crazed lech of a man. Think of someone who leaves a bottle of wine out on the counter when there’s an alcoholic around. Society tends to think that, while that’s not the wisest thing to do, the alcoholic is still the one with the problem.
And again, while framing things this way might make the woman seem dumb, they don’t see it that way. The fact that she got duped is seen as proof of how tricky men are, not how dumb women are.
As to your last point, I think social cons are actually trending that way. I’ve seen marriage advice put out by evangelical groups in the past few years which basically says that husbands should do whatever their wives want.
The reason it makes no sense is because it isn’t about killing fetuses. It’s about controlling the sexuality of women. If you think about it from that viewpoint, it makes perfect sense. A woman who was raped wasn’t being sexual, so it’s ok to kill the fetus. A person who was opposed to killing fetuses would be pushing for free, easy access to contraception, but the anti-abortionists are opposed to contraception. No plan B, no over-the-counter birth control pills, no Planned Parenthood, no sex education. If you were actually opposed to abortion, you’d be pushing for these things. But they aren’t.
They are trying to punish women for having sex. It has nothing to do with abortion or fetuses and is all about controlling women. How dare you have a libido.
Not only is that straw man claim insulting to people who have deep-seated beliefs about fetuses and their value as human lives (not saying I agree with them), it’s also inconsistent with their policies. If that were true, anti-abortionists would also give exceptions to married women whose sexuality they approve of.
And plenty of anti-abortionists support access to contraception. Some oppose Plan B because it can interfere with implantation of an embryo, making it effectively an abortion, and some oppose Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions. Sure, some also oppose sex ed and all contraceptives too, but for different reasons - and they oppose them for men as well as women.