Apparently anti-abortion activists who remain strident that abortion should be illegal haven’t thought through what would happen to women should the right to the procedure be revoked.
A team of people interview anti-abortion demonstrators in Libertyville (requires RealPlayer) asking very simply, “Should there be a punishment against women who have illegal abortions?” If the answer was yes, what punishment should they be handed?
Their answers are less than satisfactory. Watch their arguments fall apart.
via Roni
Similar Posts:
- “Pro-life” laws kill women by Jill July 30, 2007
“Dear God, I am doing your good works.
Please, dear God, please send me a brain.”
God called, but somone forgot to take a message.
Hmmm, love & prayer as punishment; the crime is punishment enough. Can we send all current convicted criminals to their houses? Please?
Funny how they say that a woman’s conscience should be her guide, it’s between her and her god, & it depends on the situation. Well, not funny ha-ha but funny hypocritical.
Framing
So repeat after me: They aren’t ‘pro-life’; they’re ‘pro-criminalization’. Republicans don’t want to prevent abortion; they want to prosecute and imprison any woman who gets an abortion. To paraphrase Ted Kennedy, the religious right’s America …
Next “life chain”, we are so doing this.
Unlike other folks who’ve commented/posted on this video, I am far from heartened by it. These people are the standard (far from extremists actually) abortion protesters and what the video shows is that these people do not think their decisions through, do not consider the consequences and are easily flustered when faced with inconsistencies in their own position. Mind you, they will still vote to ensure abortion is made illegal because they believe it’s wrong, as they would be willing to vote for anything else to be made illegal if you whip them into a religious frenzy to make them believe that by not banning something you endorse it and encourage it. They are, for the most part, sheeple and it explains the extreme hyposcrisy and inconsistency in their beliefs/actions (both liberal avenger and I blogged about the inconsistency of those who are “pro-life” and willing to make exceptions for rape and incest, but not for genetic/developmental anomaly or health risk to the mother yesterday. It’s as though they have no interest in the logic or rationale, just in having their personal opinion endorsed by law.
[deleted]
In my opinion, a woman butchering her baby and using the pathetic excuse that it’s “her body” is proof that the modern-day woman has stooped to an all-time low. Proof, if you will, of the decline of civilization.
By the way, before you start slinging that worn-out drivel about me being a bible-thumping, radical right-winger from Double Buck, Alabama, it may interest you to know that I’m an atheist, and I cannot stand the conservative Christain right, either. I don’t want prayer in school, and I think “Gawd” should be taken off the currency and out of the pledge. I’m not against abortion because Gawd told me so in that there Bible, I’m against it because it’s MURDER and the taking of a defenseless, innocent life is WRONG. There you go. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
as a woman who has had an abortion (and yes, it was a dificult decision), I #1 did not terminate my pregnancy because it was my body and I’d do whatever I damn well please with it and #2 have never felt I “murdered my baby”.
The it’s my body response is about 2 things: health care/medical decisions and privacy (which are deeply intertwined). When it comes to medical decisions about my health, you damn well better be sure I should be the final arbiter of any decision made (or my opinions on the matter considered appropriately, if I am incapacitated to a point I can not provide informed consent).
Many people do not think a zygote, embryo or early term fetus to be the equivalent to a baby that is supporting life functions independently of a host (aka the mother’s body). It is something with a potential to develop into a baby and be born alive, but not fully formed human being. As such, it’s not being murdered (if you feel this way, I suggest you ensure you refrain from procreating with anyone whose opinions differ from yours).
You, like most in the pro-criminalization movement (including those who walk off the protest line to terminate pregnancies themselves), make great assumptions as to why women terminate and what they think. You don’t know, but then you obviously don’t want to know because you refuse to believe that anyone could terminate after thinking about it because (in your mind) if they did think about it they’d make the same decision as you – you are absolutely wrong in this.
Oh yeah, adoption. Nice of you to think that adopted kids should/would think they were given up because mommy didn’t want them – shows a great mindset. Check the records and stats on adoption for minority and less than healthy children; healthy white babies are a precious commodity – too many others are considered “unadoptable” and languish in the system (bad enough for minority children, terrible for children with health problems that are not adequately addressed/treated by the state). Of course none of this matters to you – you are right because you know all the facts about any possible situation.
Pro-Criminalization and inconsistency in the abor
The big chat (outside the turdblossom/McClellan/NBCs David Gregory has real testicles excitement) yesterday was the videotaped interviews with some abortion protesters in Libertville, IL. Lauren thought it was interesting to what as the protesters ad…
Crime without punishment
This was interesting. AtCenterNetwork.com, an online news site, asked abortion protestors if abortion were made illegal, what should the punishment be for women who have an illegal abortion. It’s fun to watch these protestors, many working for several…
How Would Fundies Punish Illegal Abortion? Uuuhh…
Watch the gears turn – or try to turn as anti-abortion clinic protesters holding those ubiquitous fake abortion photos are asked what the punishment for an illegal abortion should be. click click click… takes most of them a while to
Wow. So now they want to force women into coathanger abortions and then drag them straight from the alley, into the courtroom to be tried and sentenced? God is so good, man.His mercy is everlasting.
Not that I would advocate such a thing, but the simplest solution would just be to punish the doctors, not the patients. If a doctor who was caught performing an abortion was faced with prison time–or even just a fine and loss of liscence to practice medicine– there would probably be a steep decline in the number of available (safe) abortions. Which I think is what anti-abortion types want.
Agreed, but if the “abortion is murder” mantra holds true across the board, it is a woman seeking out said murder who then deserves prison time for said murder. A doctor would be an accomplice, I assume.
Where my law people at?
Obviously Marksman believes that abortion is a new phenomenon, one that did not exist in any way whatsoever prior to Roe v Wade. It’s obvious he has absolutely no sense of historical context on this issue, because if he did he would know that even the Catholic Church didn’t get around to declaring their anti-abortion stance until the mid-1800′s. Abortion wasn’t illegal in the United States until the 1800′s, either. And doctors in this time period were actually taught to perform what we now know as “late term abortions” in lieu of the much more deadly Caesarean section, with the understanding that when faced with the choice of killing the mother or killing the child, saving the life of the mother was most important.
In fact, the long held stance of the Catholic Church was that an unborn child did not even have a soul until the “quickening,” or the time when the mother felt the fetus move inside her womb. The quickening normally happens around the fourth or fifth month. Before this point, it wasn’t even considered a baby. Abortion was illegal in this country for just over a century (a blink of an eye in a historical context) when Roe v Wade overturned anti-abortion laws. So again, Marksman, when you consider the historical context of abortion, your comment that women choosing to terminate their pregnancies is “proof” of the “decline of civilization” makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Lauren:
If abortion is considered committing murder from a legal perspective, a woman/couple obtaining one would be part of a murder for hire conspiracy with the person seeking the abortion (woman/couple) as the mastermind/lead conspirator and the person performing the abortion as the hit man. It would be murder one.
While I appreciate the responses to Marksmen, I also feel that a guy who shows up calling people here murderers and butcherers and implying that they are “coiled, steaming pile[s] of dogshit” should just be asked to keep his misogynist rantings to himself.
or maybe it’s just that, as someone who has had an abortion and who actually knows what it feels like (NOT murder, I can tell you that much) and what kind of moral decision it is to make (again, NOT murder) I resent men who show up on feminist blogs and hijack comment threads while hurling hateful insults.
Again, playing devil’s advocate, I think that these people are arguing that abortion is murder from a moral standpoint, but it need not be from a legal one. Plus, it also could be to some a rhetorical device, analogous to “fur is murder.” I doubt that many people who chant that would advocate life in prison for people who wear fur (although they might for people who actually do the skinning of the minks).
But, more on-point, all this video demonstrates is that demonstrators frequently don’t have major aspects of their issue thought through when they’re out there waving signs. Left-wing demonstrators are just as guilty of this as this as right-wing demonstrators. Brainterminal.com has a collection of short documentaries wherein an interviewer asks a bunch of anti-war protesters some semi-tough questions, and they fold just as easily as these pro-lifers/anti-choicers/pro-criminalizers/whatevers.
Again, I think you’re right, Shankar. I still maintain that such essentialization is dangerous on any front.
You’re either with it or you’re against it
…And speaking of feeble arguments, here is a perfect example of how anti-choicers don’t base their opinions on logic and reason and in fact don’t really think their arguments through. Watch the video on Goddess Musings (via feministe).
Like Ol’ Cranky, the fact that these protestors haven’t thought the illegalization thing out frightens me. I fear that these sheeple will let someone who has thought about how to punish women for “murdering” fetuses (for example, Christian Dominionists) decide the laws & penalties to apply to aborting women if abortion’s illegalized.
If that happens, all women will be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
I’m glad we agree about the above, but I can’t agree with this one. Sometimes, things are just wrong, and you have to take a stand on them–sometimes by essentializing what it is, exactly, that’s wrong about them.
In other consensual crimes, both parties are potentially guilty of the crime, not just the provider half. Drug dealer/buyer. Prostitute/john. Given how vengeful our over-filled prisons indicate our culture is, I think it’s unlikely that an illegal abortion would be made a crime without punishment.
Reasoning out the logical end of anti-abortion activism leads to unpleasant realities, like jailed women and coat-hanger abortions, and that’s why the protesters don’t have answers to the question. They have their heads stuck in their essentialist clouds (or elsewhere), and they’re pretending that if abortion were outlawed, then no one would do it anymore. That’s naive ,and again, not realistic.
To dismiss their ignorance by saying you’ve got video of dumb leftist protesters is just playground “I know you are but what am I…” I’m sure the interviewer talked to some less moronic protesters, but chose not to include them in order to make a stronger video. That’s the sorry state of media in our culture (which the amateurs were emulating). The video demonstrates (perhaps melodramatically) a lack of attention (willful disregard?) paid to the role of women in anti-abortion politics.
Has it occurred to anyone that they might be lying about their preferred punishment? That they might be hiding their extremist side in order to gain public acceptance, until they can force that extremist side on everyone? Kind of a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ ploy of sorts?
Marksman and various other misogynists who use the term “baby killer”—The death of the “baby” in question is not the point but a side effect. Women have abortions because they don’t want to be pregnant. For them to not be pregnant, the fetus or embryo has to come out. It is a simple fact of life that said embryo/fetus is not able to survive on its own.
A person who needs an organ transplant is also not able to survive on their own. No one is forced to donate one–they don’t even take organs from dead people unless the person gave permission while living! Survival at someone else’s expense is a privelege, not a right.
Deal with it, Marksman. It IS my body. Nobody else has a right to use it. And for the record, I don’t give a damn what your belief system is. Being something other than right-wing Christian didn’t make communism any less tyrannical. It is being anti-choice and otherwise intolerant and restrictive that makes conservative Christianity a bad thing, and the same goes for you.
For Blitzgal:
http://tinyurl.com/d2kre
Shankar Gupta: Again, playing devil’s advocate, I think that these people are arguing that abortion is murder from a moral standpoint, but it need not be from a legal one.
Isn’t that the fundamental point that we need to make? They are arguing that abortion should be illegal, we need to point out that illegal = punishment.
Anything else is being pro-choice. “Between the woman and her God”. I think that actually sums up what pro-choice means.
It sounds like we’ve internalised their characterisation of us as pro-abortion so much, that this isn’t immediately obvious. Our response should be “That’s exactly what we’ve been trying to make you understand. You are pro-choice, too.”
Lauren dijo: Agreed, but if the “abortion is murder” mantra holds true across the board, it is a woman seeking out said murder who then deserves prison time for said murder. A doctor would be an accomplice, I assume.
I am not a lawyer, but
if memory serves, the Texas statute invalidated in Roe v. Wade did not punish the women at all and was only aimed at doctors, so at very least there’s a legal precedent for the inconsistency in not throwing so-called murderers in jail. Up here in Chicago, in our dizzying Senate race, Alan Keyes brought this up routinely to cast his lot in pretty much the very debate(s) we’re having here, namely that overturning Roe would not, given the nature of the previous anti-choice statutes, translate to throwing women in jail.
My own feeling is that the other side is more in favor of punishment than criminalization per se, and that makes it a whole dif’rent can of worms. I think it’s a mistake to focus on jail as the only way of making people hurt through policy.
Kyra:
This is a bad analogy. When someone is dying for lack of an organ transplant, and I don’t donate an organ, my inaction is contributing to their death. In the case of abortion, the unborn child is dying through action–the abortion.
To make the anology even worse, it could easily be applied to a woman who decided to stop feeding her already-born infant because it’s an expense she’d rather not deal with. After all, that infant is living at her expense, which is a privilage, not a right.
actually it’s a very good analogy. In both cases, one being is completely reliant on use of the body of another being in order to live. In the case of a blastocyst/embryo/fetus, is long term use of a host body to aid/perform physiological processes in order to develop to the point it can sustain itself, additionally the birth proces itself requires the host body to undergo considerable physiological stress to provide an avenue to independent living. It’s equally a consent to use argument, the donor/host must consent to use of the organ or body. In organ/tissue donation, there may be more than 1 potential donor; in pregnancy, there is only one potential host post implantation.
You make the assumption that if a pregnancy is not terminated, it is very likely to go to term and result in live birth. Some organ/tissue donations have significantly higher good outcome stats (FYI donation of blood products would be as applicable as an organ; there may be little risk to the donor but the donor can not be compelled to donate even if they are the only match and the potential recipient must have the transfusion to live).