Should aborters go to jail?

Last week's developments in South Dakota have really got people thinking and talking about abortion. Where (besides the Supreme Court?) are we headed, with many states moving to make abortion illegal in all cases this side of death, no matter what the circumstances?


Digby asks if women should go to jail for having an illegal abortion? Why ask the question?

[B]ecause 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?

[...] So I think we need to have this discussion. Let's debate it out in the open and "air both sides" because from where I sit it's the "pro-lifers" who haven't thought this thing through. Nobody says they can't agitate against abortion and stand out there with their sickening pictures and try to dissuade women from doing it. I will defend their right to argue against abortion forever. But when they use the law to enforce their moral worldview they need to recognize that they can't have it both ways. If fetuses are human and have the same rights as the women in whom they live, then a woman who has an abortion must logically be subject to the full force of the law. It would be a premeditated act of murder no different than if she hired a hit man to kill her five year old. The law will eventually be able to make no logical moral distinction. Is everybody ready for that?

I don't know about everybody, but RSA is doing the math:

[...] [W]e can reasonably estimate that there have been 25 million first-time abortions carried out since 1972.

How many of these 25 million woman are alive today? A woman who was 40 years old in 1972 would now be in her mid-70s today, so we have to imagine a very large percentage: 80%, perhaps? That makes 20 million women. Some number of these women were married at the time of their abortion. Let's conservatively put the number at 15%, to encompass all those who talked the procedure over with their husbands: 3 million men who actively participated in the planning. We could add the number of doctors who have performed abortions over the past few decades, but let's stop at this point: 23 million people who decided an abortion should take place.

Clearly, putting all those women, and the men who aid and abet them, in prison would be a dramatic step, and we're not really sure that's were we want to go -- even the anti-abortion folks are stumbling on this one:

If you ask most pro-lifers whether they think that women should be punished as murderers they say no. If you asked if they think women should be punished by the law at all, they say no. They don't want to punish the father either. The proposed laws target only the doctor who performed the surgery (or dispensed the drug) and for much less time than they would receive for killing a child. Now that we are moving beyond the demagoguery of the pulpit and the sidewalk and into the legal arena I think we all have a right to know how these people made these distinctions and why.

As with the arguments about rape and incest, the "pro-life" argument that abortion is murder is morally inconsistent. And if it isn't murder, then what is it?

Well, we're not sure. Once you start asking the questions, these people become more and more unwilling to answer them. Take the question of the 2-year-old baby vs. five blastulas:

Imagine that you're in a burning fertility clinic with a 2-year-old baby and a petri dish containing five blastulas. You can't save both, so which do you save?

Is that an evil trick question as Andrew Wilkow claims, or is this something we all need to think about?

While we're contemplating the deeper issues involved in the abortion debate, we also might question the politics as well. Many people maintain that many anti-abortionists in DC are cynically using the issue, not because they really want to outlaw abortion (because then they'd lose their big money issue!), but rather because it gets people to the polls. McJoan points out that this thinking is flawed:

One of the political arguments constantly fowarded on abortion is that Democrats shouldn't fight to defend Roe v. Wade because the far right really doesn't want to see Roe overturned. The argument generally goes that they get too much traction from abortion to give it up--Roe is just too important as a rallying point for motivating volunteers, raising money, and ultimately bringing people to the polls. South Dakota puts the lie to that theory.

These people, including Bill "Sodomized Religious Virgin" Napoli, aren't just a bunch of religious fantatics being used by cynical national politicians to get elected. No, they're the people actually getting elected at every level of government, from school boards and city councils all the way to the U.S. Senate. Their effort to end legalized abortion is played out in state level efforts to restrict abortion to its Constitutional limits.

Who is Bill Napoli, you ('re about to be sorry you) asked? Oh, this guy makes me think of that line from Barton Fink: "You're a sick fuck, Fink":

South Dakota Republican Senator Bill Napoli not only sets himself up as an expert on abortion -- with the view that most abortions are performed merely for "convenience" -- the Savage Senator has also given the subject of rape, or raping, an inordinate amount of thought.

And Bill Napoli appears to have a thing for virgins.

Here's the Scumbag Senator's definition of a rape severe enough to warrant an exception to the South Dakota abortion ban:

A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

[...] If the Savage Senator gets his way, you better be the Virgin Mary and your rapist better give your virtuous self a savagely sodomized near-death experience, or you are having his baby!

But back to the question as to whether or not these anti-abortion folks are in it for the votes and donations, or if they it's all just cynical politics. Digby thinks they really mean it:

But more than anything else we must accept the fact that these people are serious. They want to outlaw abortion and they want to curtail people's access to birth control. They aren't lying. And as they've shown with gun rights, they are in it for the long haul. We must be just a stubborn as they are and seek to wear them down rather than let them wear us down.

This is not an issue for tweaking. Let's tweak on the Ten Commandments or public funds for parochial schools or something else if it is necessary to adjust for this family values crap in order to win elections. State mandated forced childbirth and denial of access to birth control cannot be negotiated or finessed. This one's going to have to be fought out head to head, day to day to a final reckoning. That's what they are going to do and if we don't recognise that and act accordingly, we will lose.

Digby mentioned another issue that has begun to take hold among the Forced Childbirth Lobby: not only do they want to outlaw abortion, they don't want us women using birth control, either. Maybe they're overreaching or perhaps they really don't want us women having sex for any reason except procreation (and we better not enjoy ourselves when we do get to do it!). It is at this point that smijer picks up the thread:

The abortion debate carries a very large number of complex and difficult questions and controversies, but it very frequently revolves around the notion (from the pro-life side, mainly) that people women and infants should have to live with any negative consequences of an unintended pregnancy - if they (the women, that is) should wish to avoid those consequences, then they should choose not to have sex. Of course, some pro-lifers back down from that position when the negative consequence is death (not lifelong disability, or any of the myriad other possible "natural consequences" of pregnancy) for the woman. It is acceptable, apparently, to some pro-lifers for a woman to choose to have sex, but then avoid the consequence of that choice if it happens to be death. That position seems at odds with their philosophy that "personal responsibility" is the foundational value, to which all other values must be subordinate, but there you have it.

But that's beside the point... The point is that from one perspective, including Digby's, the "personal responsibility" gig boils down to this: don't want to impoverish your family, or leave your offspring to the tender mercies of the state foster care system? Then close your legs.

Of course, all this discussion ignores many of the loose ends that never have been cleaned up in the abortion debate. No one has ever explained why supposed pro-lifers cease to care about these precious lives once they've emerged from the womb, but Bob Herbert hasn't forgotten. He once again asks why do we, as a society, abandon babies as soon as they're born?

The deaths, as horrible as they are, don't begin to convey the enormity of the problem. In 2003, authorities were alerted to nearly three million cases of youngsters who were alleged to have been abused or neglected, and confirmed a million of them. The number of cases that never come to light is, of course, anybody's guess.

What's remarkable to me is that we've been hearing about this enormously tragic problem for so long,, decades, and yet the reaction to each sickening case that makes it into the media spotlight is shock. How many times are we going to be shocked before serious steps are taken to alleviate the terrible suffering and prevent the horrible deaths of as many of these children as we can?

And in the meantime, the right-to-lifers, having failed to answer any of these questions (and in fact, giving the impression that they are not bothered by them in the least), forge ahead in many states, including right here in Tennessee:

Senator David Fowler (R) is the misogynist responsible for SJR 127. Fowler has been trying to outlaw abortion in this state at least since 2001. You might say he is obsessed with the project of controlling women.

Sen. Joe Haynes (D-Nashville) made an effort to amend SJR 127, in his view exceptions should be made for victims of rape, incest, and health problems. His amendment went nowhere.

As always, Sen. Steve Cohen (D) spoke in defense of a woman's right to be in charge of her own body. Of course no one was persuaded.

Sen. Rosalind Kurita (the under-funded Democratic candidate for Bill Frist’s seat) said that SJR 127 amounts to a death penalty for women. She said the Senate has no right to pass a death sentence on women. Kurita added, "I cannot support this resolution. What this resolution says is that we don’t care about what happens to women."

Kurita is a nurse. She named a number of diseases that threaten the health of pregnant women and asked Evil David Fowler if he is knowledgeable about the diseases.

Sen. Fowler (615-741-1764) said he "knows what it is to be pregnant," but doesn’t know anything about the diseases that threaten pregnant women.

Rosalind Kurita said that the way to prevent abortions is to eradicate poverty and provide childcare. The women in the balcony broke the rule and responded with thunderous applause.

Evil Senator Finney addressed Sen. Kurita: "Where does it say this resolution prevents abortion?"

Kurita: "Sen. Finney, Just what do you think is the purpose of this resolution?"

The women in the balcony responded with unrestrained laughter.

The wingnuts droned on forever with their favorite nutty theory about fetuses being the equivalent of 19th century slaves. I say it's past time for some technology that will free the 'fetus slaves' by putting them into the bodies of rabid old white rightwing men. What a damper that would put on their drinking and womanizing days.

It's a good time to call your State Reps. Tell them to Vote NO on SJR 17.

If SJR 127 passes this year in both the Senate and House, it will return next year. If it passes by a two-thirds majority in either 2007 or 2008, the people of Tennessee will get to vote, in 2010, on the state's right to control women's bodies. After that maybe we can vote on old white men's right to interfere with gawd's plan by using Viagra.

You might want to call Rosalind Kurita and thank her, 615-741-2374, toll free, (800) 449-8366 Ext. 12374. And Steve Cohen, 615-741-4108.