How Should We Punish the Woman?

Digby has an excellent note on the logical disconnects in the rabid anti-abortion movement, including its codification in the new South Dakota law. The only penalty in that law is a 5-year suspension of the doctor’s right to practice medicine. How can it be murder in the legal sense if you do not apply the penalties for murder to the woman who planned and executed it?

Picture if you will a poll in which Americans are asked if women should be jailed for murdering their unborn child with an illegal abortion. What do you think they would say? . . . I think it's fair to assume that it would be rejected by more than 90 percent of the population.

That's because it's clear that there is almost nobody who believes that abortion is murder in the legal sense of the word. How can there be a law against "murder" where the main perpetrator is not punished? How can it be murder if these people don't believe that the person who planned it, hired someone to do and paid for it is not legally culpable? http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/

Many have noted that the label “pro-choice” and “pro-life” have stacked the deck in the press – with “pro-choice” suggesting a “pro-abortion” position, or at least a cavalier attitude about sex and terminating a pregnancy. It’s that “framing” thing again – except that it is fundamental analysis of what you really stand for, not just the PR stunt that the word “framing” implies. A political party has no business taking a position on whether abortion is morally wrong or not, but only on what government should do about it. The “pro-choice” position is nothing more nor less than saying that it necessarily, within the civil realm that involves government, is a decision to be made by the woman. Not only does a law on abortion intrude deeply into private matters – requiring under Constitutional law a “compelling” governmental interest to justify. In addition, making a decision that protection of a fetus even at the earliest stages is such a compelling interest means selecting certain religious values not shared by virtually 100% of the population. That sounds like establishing religion in my book.

A person who believes abortion is morally wrong, but who also believes in America and the Constitution – who also believes there is a civic morality that requires us to refrain from asking the government to impose one’s own moral beliefs on those who do not share them -- should accept at least the essence of Roe v. Wade as the correct decision. It is hard to hold such apparently opposing things in suspension, but as Americans, that is exactly the kind of thing we are asked to do.