August 17, 2008
No penalty for the mom who aborts does not mean the unborn are less human
Big, big swing and a miss today at both SDWatch and Madville Times. In response to my recent post - Is Abortion Wrong - Part One, William A. Anderson, a new contributor at SD Watch joined the conversation and baited me with the following question;
Let me ask you a question then. If you feel that abortion is so wrong and ought to be criminalized, what should be the punishment for the woman who procures an abortion? If it is, in fact, murder as you suggest, should she face the death penalty?
My response was as follows;
William- Fair question, though obviously you are baiting me.One: In the US, the law has never put liability on the woman but on the people doing the killing.
Two: The womans judgment is impaired because she is in crisis.
Three: More importantly, many if not most abortions are the result of the woman being coerced by people or circumstances.
Four: The law, IM11, says the woman is immuned.
Note Section 13- it states nothing in this act subjects the pregnant woman upon whom any abortion is performed or attempted to any criminal conviction and penalty for an unlawful abortion.I'll quote that for you here so this fear is put to rest. (BTW, these are the false fears Planned Parenthood is espousing. They hope no one will actually read the law themselves. They hope people will only listen to what they are saying about it. Remember, they profit into the hundreds of millions of dollars from this so their undeniably bias words aren't welcome anymore in the conversation.
From Section 13 - "Nothing in this Act subjects the pregnant woman upon whom any abortion is performed or attempted to any criminal conviction or penalty for an unlawful abortion."
Apparently William got the answer he was fishing for because he really wanted to make this point: What Good Is an Abortion Ban If There's No Penalty for the Mother? To further make his case, he links to a YouTube video of pro-lifers bumbling over the question "What should the penalty be for a woman who has an illegal abortion?" The inference is we haven't thought through this very well. Though many probably haven't, and the notable tentativeness on the video to punish the women is undeniable, wrong conclusions are drawn as to why reasonable people are reticent and unwilling to ascribe full murder penalties in the case of abortion.
I note Anderson is hoping to go to law school when he graduates from college. Perhaps there he will learn that murder is murder no matter what punishment or penalty is connected to it. The law has always recognized degrees such as first, second or third degree separated by considerations such as whether or not it was willful, deliberate, malicious, or intentional. Or, if it was involuntary, incidental, the result of negligence, insanity and so on. The bottom line, which is the murder of a human being, remains unchanged regardless of the fact that the law gives substantial consideration to many factors possibly contributing to it.
The Eight Circuit Court of Appeals in the Informed Consent ruling concluded that abortion terminates the life of a separate living unique human being. Cory at Madville is misleading people with his post - Abortion is Not Murder: Proof in the Punishment. He correctly points out that full "murder" penalties are not written into IM11 but falsely concludes why this is the case. Celebrating Anderson's post at SDWatch, Cory at Madville succombs to what Bob Ellis calls a fundamental "lapse in logic." See if you can see this lapse in Cory's statement:
Anderson is right: the unwillingness of anti-abortion activists to advocate full murder penalties for abortion shows that even they recognize a difference between terminating a fetus and killing a human being.
Wrong Cory, ten plus one equals eleven not three. The reason the penalties are light is because society recognizes the difficult circumstances women can find themselves in and therefore the penalties that are there (mainly for doctors who break the law) reflect these complexities. However, the result is the same - a dead human. The punishment in first degree murder is different than the punishment in involuntary manslaughter, and neither in any way suggest a lesser human status of the one killed. Cory implies those who crafted IM11 have not yet given serious consideration to the implications of it. Nothing could be further from the truth. That the penalties are less is an indication of the consideration that has been given to the complications abortion presents. And no penalties for the mom who aborts in no way changes the fact that abortion terminates a human life.
Cory's parting shot is as follows:
And deep down, as William points out in a strong blog debut, nearly everyone gets that there's a difference between a fetus and a living human being.
Cory, if everyone knows this, why could Planned Parenthood not provide the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ANY evidence that what you say its true?
The other anti-life bloggers are scrambling to produce a study that justifies yesterdays unsubstantiated claim at Flying Tomato that abortion numbers stay the same whether abortion is legal or not. But they are unable to find anything that isn't directly tied to Planned Parenthood. Remember folks, Planned Parenthood gets muted in this dialog about whether abortion is right or wrong because they profit into the hundreds of millions of dollars a year by keeping abortion legal. Again, they are best likened to the tobacco company trying to fight those saying smoking kills.
Comments on No penalty for the mom who aborts does not mean the unborn are less human »
William @ 4:45 pm
Wow, look at me getting some attention from my first post.
I can understand where you're coming from here, but your logic is flawed. Your first point mentions that we don't prosecute the women because they're not the one performing the abortion, yet we still try people for conspiracy of murder if they pay someone else to murder another person. That is severely punishable under the law, contracted murders are illegal and punished very similarly to murder. So your point does not stand.
Next, your second and third points suggest that women are unaware of the consequences of their action, that their judgment is impaired. First of all, this is offense and sexist thinking. To assert that a woman doesn't understand what she's doing when she has an abortion is an insult to the intelligence of not just women, but all people. Especially when South Dakota law is so heavily demanding that doctors inform women who receive abortions about what they're doing. Sonograms and all, we make sure women know what they're doing when they have an abortion - it's what conservatives in our Legislature want.
And lastly, your fourth point about IM 11 not prosecuting women just makes my case complete - it's a toothless law that does little and says much. It's bad legislation, poorly written, and doesn't deserve to be codified.
Steve @ 5:01 pm
William - to your first paragraph I say swing and miss again. Apples and oranges.
To your second paragraph I say swing and miss. Strike two. You are fully callous to the thousands of testimonies of women regarding their abortion experience. To your last point, strike three brother. It's hardly a toothless law and the proof there is that doctors aren't dumb enough to do Planned Parenthood's dirty work and risk jail time and the loss of their medical license. Poorly written? Hah - do you need a briefing on the last five years of legal and legislative work that brings us to IM11?
Joe @ 6:11 pm
Both supporters and opponents of unborn human rights are wrong here. The abortionists are wrong because they allow their intense psychological compulsion to have the killing of unborn human beings available to cloud their judgment to the point that they cannot accept the basic reality that we human beings have a fundamental right to live a full human lifespan in accordance with our nature and killing us AT ANY POINT in our lives violates our rights and is a crime.
Antiabortionists (prolifers) are wrong because they insist on allowing mothers and fathers who freely choose to commit violent lethal crimes against their unborn children to get completely away with it. Their position would allow mothers to kill their unborn children by themselves completely legally and would allow them to contract with, pay and assist criminal abortionists in destroying the lives of such children. All such criminal activity (and it really is that) would be completely legal for the mother (and presumably the father). This is a variation of the abortionist position, is not pro-life and does not come close to constituting full legal protection for unborn children.
Admittedly, mothers frequently are under psycholgical pressure and are conned by criminal abortionists into killing their unborn children. They also may not know enough about human development to know exactly what they are doing. This is why I believe the penalties should be less for criminal abortion than criminal murder, because of these mitigating circumstances, but we must have penalties nevertheless. We do not fail to penalize other crimes simply because of psycholgical pressures or lack of understanding.
If we fail to prosecute mothers and fathers for their crimes against their unborn children, we will not give them a disincentive or deterrent to doing so and will sacrifice over the years millions of children needlessly in pursuit of an idea which is completely unsound. If we are to stop mothers killing their unborn children we must not let them get away with the crime.
Jessy @ 7:22 pm
William,
A woman's judgment is VERY impaired when she is faced with a crisis pregnancy. I knew what I was doing when I walked into that abortion clinic but NO ONE ever told me about the physical and mental repercussions that would follow.
Heidi @ 11:11 pm
First, I won't contradict women's statements who say they were coerced into having an abortion or didn't understand what they were doing when had an abortion, but it is still insulting to say that ALL women don't understand their actions. The vast majority of women who get abortions know exactly what they are doing and feel it is the best and safest choice for them. To label women as inherently vulnerable and clueless is indeed sexist.
Second, even if women are under extreme duress and not thinking clearly, under the law that still would not exempt them from punishment for their actions. If I lost my job and had no money and had to feed my family and so I robbed a bank, I could claim that I did it under extreme duress, but that still would not exempt me from punishment for my crime. If you want abortion to be illegal, you have to be prepared for women to be prosecuted for murder or accessory to murder.
Steve @ 11:59 am
What's going on? Sorry to those of you just joining us and wondering why the two link's to William Anderson's article at SDWatch all of a sudden don't work. Anybody have any theories there? Perhaps it's temporary or a technical glitch but the fact that both posts of Anderson's are gone makes me think that Todd Epp, a lawyer, and host at SDWatch agrees with me that Anderson's analysis of law is as swiss cheese and is wisely distancing himself from it by pulling the posts. I appreciate Cory at Madville re-pasting them on his website.
http://madvilletimes.blogspot.com/2008/08/abortion-is-not-murder-proof-in.html
caheidelberger @ 7:20 am
Nice try, Pastor Hickey. Todd did not pull the article in disagreement, guaranteed. So much of your argumentation is based on stuff you imagine and wish for rather than what actually is.
Coercion and impaired judgment — just can't quit belittling women, casting them all as inferior, irrational beings, can you? Many women reason through their options and choose, rationally, to have an abortion. (And they don't all turn into the psychological messes that Church at the Gate thinks it has to save.)
And the doctors: is their judgment impaired? Are they coerced?
If you really believed that a fetus was equal to a human being and that abortion was murder, you'd argue for Class A or Class B felony. But you don't. Almost no one does. You know deep down that abortion is not murder, but you can't give up your juicy campaign slogan. "Abortion is second-degree manslaughter!" just doesn't sound as good… but that's what IM11 makes it (SDCL 22-16-20 says second degree manslaughter is a Class 4 felony).
caheidelberger @ 7:22 am
And right on, Heidi!
Steve @ 2:56 pm
Then why did Todd pull the article? I still think it was swiss cheese legally speaking and he knew it and had a higher standard on his blog than that kind of argumentation.
Abortion terminates a human life. The penalties ascribed to it reflect in no way on that fact. Society takes into consideration the factors involved in the taking of human life and thus the lesser punishments. You amaze me that you are still on this point.
And more amazing is how open callous you are toward women.
"Inferior?" You lost me there. I think women are smarter than men. I teach they are more refined and many other things which I'll refrain from sharing here. When God created man he said "good" but with the woman he said "very good" and what I teach about this makes me a radical feminist. Planned Parenthood is the enemy of women. Quit putting words in my mouth.