Posted on 08/16/2007 11:23:43 AM PDT by mngran
Buried among prairie dogs and amateur animation shorts on YouTube is a curious little mini-documentary shot in front of an abortion clinic in Libertyville, Ill. The man behind the camera is asking demonstrators who want abortion criminalized what the penalty should be for a woman who has one nonetheless. You have rarely seen people look more gobsmacked. It's as though the guy has asked them to solve quadratic equations. Here are a range of responses: "I've never really thought about it." "I don't have an answer for that." "I don't know." "Just pray for them."
You have to hand it to the questioner; he struggles manfully. "Usually when things are illegal there's a penalty attached," he explains patiently. But he can't get a single person to be decisive about the crux of a matter they have been approaching with absolute certainty.
A new public-policy group called the National Institute for Reproductive Health wants to take this contradiction and make it the centerpiece of a national conversation, along with a slogan that stops people in their tracks: how much time should she do? If the Supreme Court decides abortion is not protected by a constitutional guarantee of privacy, the issue will revert to the states. If it goes to the states, some, perhaps many, will ban abortion. If abortion is made a crime, then surely the woman who has one is a criminal. But, boy, do the doctrinaire suddenly turn squirrelly at the prospect of throwing women in jail.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
And if the kid is, say, 18 months old and she similarly denies knowing that it was really alive?
Historically American orphanages produced individuals who often outperformed their peers.
Naturally this was intolerable to a Socialist State which seeks to maximize the production of incompetent, dependent and preferably sociopathic citizens.
What about the 15 year old “father” who beat his girlfriend in order to kill his unborn child, as described in Post 98. You could that he thought that it was a blob of cells, after all, he is no doctor. Should he be charged with the baby’s death, or just assault on the mother?
Next question?
Okay. What about women who use an abortifacient like RU-486 or use an "at-home" method? Who's the butcher in that case? What should her penalty be?
What should her penalty be?
***Her penalty should be the same penalty as the guy who hits her car on the way over and kills that innocent life in an accident. If that preborn human has a right to live in the one case but not in the other case, then that simply doesn’t make sense. I believe in extending the right to live to that preborn human. <-— note the period.
With abortion, you must make sure that no break is EVER available to the abortionist and that, after appropriate testimony, the woman can always walk. The purpose is, after all, to stop abortion. Punishing the women individually will not work, will convict few women (who will have compelling excuses to play the emotion card with the jury as moneybags Jack the Slice will not have) and will let the actual abortionist off the hook as often as not for lack of credible or sufficient evidence.
Connecticut was one of the very first states to criminalize abortion. It did so in the 1820s when Congregationalist ministers (Connecticut's established religion until 1818) in four different communities were charged with aborting the offspring of their respective illegitimate relations with women not their wives. Connecticut remained staunchly pro-life until well after Roe vs. Wade. The Connecticut statutes on abortion (including those passed by 5-1 in each house of the General Assembly in 1972 or so) provided for a five-year jail term for the woman and a five-year jail term for the abortionist. Yet, the actual history of prosecution was that actual prosecution of the women beyond preliminary efforts was rare. The felony with five years penalty was hung over the women to force them to testify against the abortionists which they generally did. When the abortionist was convicted on the testimony of the woman, the charges against the woman were dropped.
The net result was to choke off the supply of abortionists. If you try to convict each woman, there will be an intolerable backlog that will frustrate justice. Let her testify against Dr. Death in exchange for dismissal of her charges. She can take the Fifth Amendment when brought to the witness stand, in which case she is prosecuted and the doctor MAY go free for the moment. More likely, she will testify and guarantee the abortionist's conviction. "Another one bites the dust! And another one down and another one down...." How many women will serve the abortionist's term for him????
That is how abortion was controlled and frustrated and punished in Connecticut and many other states for most of the history of the republic and how it can be again.
Our biggest problem is going to be stopping "jury nullification" by those pro-aborts willing to lie under oath in voir dire to become jurors who refuse to convict.
We are still going to have to fight the public relations war. Ultrasound will help immensely but we can take nothing for granted.
Treat the supplier of RU-486 as the killer. Arrest the mother and make her testify against the supplier or face trial and punishment herself. AFTER she has testified, her charges get dismissed.
See #107
Go after the pharmaceutical company. Next?
Well said
Well said
The number of U.S. abortions every year is close to a million. Do you really think there are that many instances of temporary insanity among women?
What about the woman who uses abortion as a means of birth control, or who opts for a late-term abortion because she decides she doesn't want to lose out on a potential promotion?
If abortion is prohibited, I do think leniency should be applied in most circumstances. However, I do not think it should be given automatically. For some women, probably a minority, abortion is chosen out of convenience, not duress. They should be accountable for the crime along with the abortionist.
As in the infamous "coat hanger". Answers still the same, go after the abortionist, whether it be the woman herself or a colleague.
Check out BlackElk's post 107 for some insight on how enforcement worked in the real world.
Thanks for the background.
Whatever the penalty is for murder. Of course, the 'doctor' who performs the abortion should get the same penalty.
If abortion is murder (which it is), and if the woman willingly goes to the doctor to get an abortion, then she paid someone to murder her child.
The penalty for paying to have your husband murdered is not 'nothing'. Why should a person who pays to have their child murdered get off scott free?
Good post.
Huh? I’m not saying that at all. Sheesh. Just because I don’t believe in jailing a mom seeking an abortion means I support abortion. I have been pro-life for years now and even in cases of rape I believe the baby is totally innocent. In cases of rape, I believe in the morning after pill. Sorry, but I just do. A woman who can bring a baby to term after rape is very special; the baby is innocent but I could and would never force that woman to do so.
Yep, I think all pregnant women are temporarily insane and emotionally unstable. Been that way multiple times myself.
But I had a husband who housed, clothed, fed and nurtured me through my pregnancies. If I was alone, abandoned or worse pressured by the father and others to abort, I can see how in my hormonal and emotionally unstable state how I could have been seduced to the dark side by those who love death.
Our nation is committing suicide through infanticide.
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