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 ...
Because they are duped. They don’t believe it is murder because the person doing the deed tells them it isn’t. There’s got to be some leniency granted, in my opinion.
Tough one.
Not really. Enforcement of abortion bans is nothing new, it has been going on for most of our nation's history.
See BlackElk's post 107 for some background on how the state of Connecticut handled it before the Roe vs Wade decision.
You make it sound like these abortion doctors are out trolling for women to abort. The woman is the initial actor here -- she seeks out the abortionist.
Besides, most women who have abortions are full-fledged adults capable of making moral (or immoral) decisions -- not children who don't know right from wrong.
I think the kind of women that are getting abortions are generally the kind that are VERY childish and I question their intelligence and their ability to discern right from wrong.
I see it similar to drugs — people who want them are going to get them, no matter what the risks or illegality. As such, policing it is going to be dicey and maybe not too successful.
We’re not having trouble charging or convicting third parties for killing children in Texas under the Prenatal Protection Act (our “Connor and Lacy” law) that we passed in ‘03. I believe that 2 or 3 cases have survived appeal to the Texas Supreme Court or are being considered at the TSC at this time.
This law also shows the distinctions that can be made under law.
Some District Attorney decided to use the law to prosecute women who used drugs while pregnant. The women took plea bargains and plead guilty. Then they fought the cases under appeal and won.
The law was never intended to prosecute a mother. In fact, realists and incrementalists that we had to be, the only way we could get it passed was to specifically exempt the mother of the child and a legal medical “provider” doing what she hired him to do.
One reason to *not* prosecute these women is that there are much fewer options for treatment for a woman, much less a pregnant woman. And while there’s no evidence that criminal prosecution for drug addiction does anyone any good - much less the family - as long as it’s legal to obtain an abortion, the threat of conviction encourages abortion. That’s contraindicated for us prolife people.
There is some question, however, as to whether or not we can use the law in combination with new parental consent law, in order to criminally prosecute abortionists - some say with a charge of capital murder - who intentionally kill the children of girls who are not able to consent under Texas law.
Agreed.
Very informative, as always.
I heard on the radio the other day that teens were polled about what charity or organization would they most like to volunteer for, the number one response was PETA! The red cross was a close second, but MAN! That’s just ridiculous. When I was a teen I would’ve said the Peace Corps(the toughest job you’ll ever love, was their slogan). I even thought about doing it. I found out the peace corps was doing work in Appalachia with illiteracy, sanitation, and housing and I wanted to do that. I’ve never understood charities that go over seas to help foreigners when there are people right here in america that need assistance. I suppose I couldn’t blame a youngster for being seduced by greenpeace and going on those adrenaline charged expeditions to save the whales from whaling ships. But PETA?? INSANE!
But anyway, my point is that people are sheep. These teens are responding with the organization they hear about most in the media. When’s the last time you heard about the salvation army or the gideons or the united catholic charities organization doing some outrageous PR stunt that caused an uproar and got nation wide MSM coverage?
.
“That will dry up the supply of people who will do abortions pretty quickly”
No. There have always been Drs or people with medical training (or no training at all) willing to perform abortions. They were doing it when it *was* illegal. My great grandmother’s sister-in-law died in 1919 from an illegal abortion after having (and losing) seven children, when she was close to 50.
Ask anyone who worked in an ER prior to Roe vs Wade. They’ll tell you about the supply. They treated the aftermath, the butchered uterus, the spiky fevers, the hemorrhaging, the infections, the deaths.
The abortive woman has to live with her decision, which is a heavy penalty - even for the ones who openly deny the abortion has any effect. There NO REASON, however, to contribute to their lie by suppressing facts about unborn babies and about the violence of the procedure itself.
Bump
Life in prison for the abortionist - he’s the one who did the killing for MONEY.
What the video proves is that the pro-abortionists are lying when they say that pro-lifers are anti-woman, are out to punish women, that they hate women, that they primarily want to control women’s lives, etc. If all those lies were true, then the pro-lifers would have all answered with proposals for jail terms, fines, etc.
The fact is that before Roe v. Wade, the number of women who were punished for abortion was minuscule. I would venture to say there were years that went by without a single woman’s facing any penalties. The abortion laws were enforced against the abortionists.
Any pro-abortion group that is going to make this the centerpiece of an advertising campaign is only going to be advertising the fact that all the smears against pro-life people as anti-woman, vindictive, etc., were just that—smears.
This video is nothing but an attempt to play “Gotcha.”
Being in favor of not killing babies does not impose on anybody the obligation to figure out the jail sentences for those who get abortions. And the fact that these pro-lifers couldn’t answer the question doesn’t in the least weaken the case against murdering babies.
“And the fact that these pro-lifers couldn’t answer the question doesn’t in the least weaken the case against murdering babies.”
Right you are!
These Catch 22 questions that antilifers like to pose are plain, old DEFLECTION.
Ewwwwww. Vick is in HEAP big trouble - no?
Woman - Murder one
Doctor - Murder one
Punisment..Simple... the time is determined by the laws of orgin.
In Jewish law (Moses time).. a life for a life.
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