Daniel Florien posted a very interesting interview he did, asking anti-abortionists the the question: “If abortion was illegal, what should be done with the women who have illegal abortions?”. (Read is post and see his video interviews here or watch just the video on youtube).
It is fascinating to see the peoples faces when asked this question. Many look totally perplexed and dazed… “eh… women? Do with? What do you mean? We are talking about babies. What do women have to do with it? You mean there are _women_ involved with unborn babies?” Several of the interviewed people’s eyes mirror a total confusion, an absolute lack of comprehension at first. And none of them succeed in giving an answer that is in legal harmony with their standpoint that abortion is murder. Yet they claim categorically and contend that abortion is murder, with no hesitation or revision of that statement.
None of the people asked had a legally logical answer. Most – if not all – said they had never even thought about the question before. So, where is the logic? I think Mr Florien should have pushed the logical conclusion in his questions to the anti-abortion demonstrators: “Since you claim abortion is murder and – on those grounds – want abortion to be illegal, you support that the women be convicted as murderers. If not, explain why”.
All I ask for is logic. If you are going to take a stand and make a claim you really must be fully consequent with that stand and claim through the whole chain: If you really contend that abortion is murder, and actively labor to make abortion illegal under that claim, then you must take stand to the legal consequences and accept women who have an abortion be persecuted according to the law. Not just accept it, but you must support that they be persecuted according to the law! The fact that these people in the interview have not even had the thought of the legal consequences even cross their mind shows that they simply have not thought the issue through at all, that their standpoint is not the result of reasoning. They simply have not sat down one second and logically thought it through. For me, it is unfathomable that you can actively campaign for a criminalization of abortion and never once consider what the punishment would be. And as they are NOT campaigning to chance the penalty of murder at the same time, but are only campaigning that abortion should be ruled as murder, means- whether they have thought about it or not - that they accept that women who have an abortion be convicted as murderers.
So, what does the law say about this? I cant believe other than that everybody knows, but still, let me walk your through it, just to make it absolutely clear:
Abortion is something that can be (n.b. can be, not _is_) something done out of desperation. But it is nothing that can be done in a moment of uncontrolled passion. It needs deciding, planing, scheduling and then the actual having it performed. In other words abortion is always a premeditated act. So if you _really_ think that abortion is murder then you must see it as premeditated murder. (Since it is premeditated, you cant charge it under man slaughter). And – to my knowledge – premeditated murder always carries a life in prison or death penalty sentence in all of the US. However mitigating the circumstances may be, I have never heard of premeditated murder carrying less than a multi-decade prison sentence in the US.
There is no two ways about it: if you _really_ believe that abortion is murder, you _must_ accept that the legal consequence is life in prison or death penalty for the woman.
If you try to claim that death penalty or life in prison is too harsh a sentence for the women then you actually by logic claim that a fetus’s life is not as much worth as that of a born person, so your whole standpoint of it being murder falls. Or are you an “ageist” claiming that people under a certain age are not as much worth as people over a certain age? Does the same thing rule for murdering cripples or imbeciles?
If you try to twist it to that “she is not the one who actually commits the crime” then there is no other option than to convict her for conspiracy and aiding to commit murder, as she is the one who decided to have the fetus “killed”, contacted the “hit man” (abortion doctor) and payed him/her to perform this “murder”, and she was at the scene of the crime and participated actively in such a way as to facilitate the murder. You simply cant get around that. So if you are not willing to sign to those legal consequences then you cannot claim that abortion is murder.
Your only other option is to at the same time actively work to have the law change so that murder of a fetus is not to be sentenced the same way as murder of a born person* and explain why it is less bad to murder an unborn baby than it is to murder a born person. (Good luck trying to explain that).
Comments are welcome, but I expect that people comment using reasoning with logical argumentation and not just arguing.
Id like to leave one comment myself.
4:07 into the film, there is one young woman who – albeit with a generous dose of hesitation and several reservations – admits that she can ultimately accept punishment and even up to life in prison for a woman who has had an abortion. All though I am appalled, disconcerted and deeply disheartened by her response, I must commend her for being consequent and accepting the logical end of her positioning as to abortion (not withstanding all her reservations of various possible mitigating circumstances). In that way she was an exception to all the others.
What I would have seen was a follow up question: Should women who have become pregnant by rape be exempted, and if so, why?
If the answer is “yes they should be exempted because she was raped”, then the logical next question would be: so why is it ok to murder an innocent person (the fetus) if the mother was raped? It is not the fetus’ fault, the fetus is innocent, so why is it ok to murder an innocent person just because its biological father was a rapist? Why cant we then murder anybody els, solely on the basis that his or her father is a criminal?
Again… if they actually fully argue that abortion is murder, then ALL abortion is murder, regardless if the woman was raped or not. So by logic they cant accept abortion even if the woman became pregnant by rape. And if they _do_ exempt rape victims, then their whole argument that abortion is murder is void, or they must embrace that they – in certain circumstances – condone murdering innocent children.
Anyhow, that is my 2 cents.
I doubt there are many people who perform an abortion lightly. It is almost always a tragedy for the mother and leaves deep wounds in her heart that may never heal. I see no reason at all to further that burden by criminalizing abortion and absolutely not by equivalenting it with murder.