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?
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.
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?
Agreed.
You’re only incentivizing home abortions - coat hangers, pills, gut-shots - these are likely to be more dangerous than a doctor.