Abortion should be Criminalized and Punishable under the law

[Rau]

…I do notr think this [that unborn should have the same legal protections as the born] necessarily follows for the reasons stated above. Certainly all innocent persons should be protected in some way by the State. But whether the legal protections have to be the same would not appear to follow. Different typical situations (abortion, infanticide, adult murder) may well require different types of State legislative protection. That is a matter of prudence and intelligent and sincere Catholics, including politicians, may differ on application of this principle.

Evidently, people at different stages of life may earn differing legal protections, eg. the young are legally protected in ways that adults are not. It is not evident that the *particular *protection of - “the right not to be directly and intentionally killed” - is one that ought differ according to stage of life. Practical considerations suggest that the means of providing or enforcing that protection may differ. Eg. the death of a ‘born’ person is typically assessed to confirm no foul play. It seems impractical to imagine such a regime to examine every death/miscarriage in utero.

I do not believe there is a clear Catholic Doctrine that would support your assertion that moral theology demands the same … legal punishment be meted out to all forms of unjust killing in society.

Punishments vary greatly according to circumstances for individual murders. One can readily imagine the different circumstances that arise in abortion too.

While this may be a perfectly acceptable prudential view for a Catholic (and indeed even the Vatican) I do not believe you will find it [ie. a requirement to punish those parents who abort their children] is directly demanded of Catholic politicians by Church ethical teachings.

Do you know if the Church demands that any perpetrator of any crime be punished? The Church requires that we (in particular those leaders of States) have an obligation to protect and defend, and punishment is a means to do that. [The State may also have a right to punish for the sake of justice, but I don’t know that that extends to an obligation.] Ultimately, the State’s actions need to be configured to do more good than harm.

 

[adamhovey1988]

Well you’re certainly not going to find a disagreement with me on this actually I’m inclined to agree abortion should be criminalized and should be punishable

 

[PRmerger]

According to the bible, the unborn are human beings from conception. According to science, the unborn have all the characteristics of life and have human DNA (making them human lives). According to every Enlightenment Thinker, every single human being is created with special rights that they have by virtue of being human, that said rights are unalienable (they can never be taken away and anyone who tries to take them away is wrong), and that said rights include Life (the right to exist and to be alive).

Based on this, anyone who infringes on the Unalienable Rights of another should be punished both out of justice for the one they harmed and for the security of everyone else. For this reason if one human attempts to kill another human (whether successful or not) that person is declared a murderer and is punished with imprisonment or worse.

Does it not follow reason and logic that these same rules should follow when a human who was born attempts or succeeds in murdering a human who is unborn? After all, if we agree that an unborn human is just as human as a born one than there is no good reason for not giving him/her the same rights and legal protection and justice.

I agree.

I think the same system we use for adjudication for a mother who kills her 1 day old baby should be what we use for a mother who kills her -10 day old baby.

 

[jtav]

The big problem is…well, good luck proving the case against the woman in a way that doesn’t open the door to massive injustice, especially given that our legal system is biased against the poor and minorities. There are too many miscarriages and stillbirths that are no one’s fault. The abortion provider is easier, and you’d still have to write the law carefully so doctors aren’t prosecuted for medical treatments that will incidentally kill the baby (chemo, etc)

 

[BornInMarch]

The big problem is…well, good luck proving the case against the woman in a way that doesn’t open the door to massive injustice, especially given that our legal system is biased against the poor and minorities. There are too many miscarriages and stillbirths that are no one’s fault. The abortion provider is easier, and you’d still have to write the law carefully so doctors aren’t prosecuted for medical treatments that will incidentally kill the baby (chemo, etc)

There would still be some cases where it would be easy to prove.

Consider the following: The police go to an illegal abortionists office to arrest him. When they do so they find a hidden camera, a list of all the names of the everyone he’s ever preformed an abortion on, and a lot of high-quality recordings of every appointment the abortionist had (all of this is because he wanted to be able to blackmail his patients if he ever felt the need to do so).

So now the police have lots of legally obtained evidence against the women who went to this man for an abortion.

 

[BornInMarch]

Personally I think there’d be a black market for morning after pills, hence why I feel there’s still be cases of it, though as has been noted it’d have to be able to be proven (from records of a supplier for example) that they had definitely used it.

There will always be cases of a crime being committed; that alone is no reason to decriminalize it. Even if we (as a society) can not arrest every single

One thing I will admit is I wonder how long it would be until popular support turned back to pro-choice again though. (The saved babies would be born to pro-choice mothers.) Not that we shouldn’t try, but it’s one concern I’d have about maintaining it.

Well the anti-abortion movement has grown in size and complexity since (and perhaps because) of Roe v Wade.

Things like pregnancy crisis centers, non-religious pro-life groups, and feminist pro-life groups were not nearly as common back then as they are now. Additionally we have new medical knowledge of pregnancy that points to the unborn being alive, and we have abandoned many of the old eugenic ideas that were more prevalent back then (some anti-abortion activists were conceived by rape or incest and speak about that openly).

Anti-abortion sentiment could be maintained by crisis centers, aid to struggling mothers, and spread of information that builds sympathy for the unborn.

 

[Listener]

Back in the days when abortion was illegal wasn’t it only the abortion provider who got in trouble?

Laws against abortion need to be very carefully thought through. Civil laws are different than moral laws. Civil laws require evidence that a crime has happened.

We all know that morally speaking, conception is the beginning of a human life. However, my understanding is that a fertilized egg is about the size of a period at the end of a sentence. If a law existed that declared a fertilized egg to be a legal human, this would be almost impossible to enforce, since no one can look at a woman and see that she is carrying a fertilized egg.

Since civil laws have to be enforced by observable facts, it seems to me, then, that a woman who has a miscarriage could be accused of negligent homicide. A boy friend who hated her could say that she went jogging when the doctor told her not to, or some such thing.

Therefore, if laws against abortion could be reinstated, it is very important that only the provider should pay the penalty.

 

[BornInMarch]

Back in the days when abortion was illegal wasn’t it only the abortion provider who got in trouble?

Laws against abortion need to be very carefully thought through. Civil laws are different than moral laws. Civil laws require evidence that a crime has happened.

We all know that morally speaking, conception is the beginning of a human life. However, my understanding is that a fertilized egg is about the size of a period at the end of a sentence. If a law existed that declared a fertilized egg to be a legal human, this would be almost impossible to enforce, since no one can look at a woman and see that she is carrying a fertilized egg.

Since civil laws have to be enforced by observable facts, it seems to me, then, that a woman who has a miscarriage could be accused of negligent homicide. A boy friend who hated her could say that she went jogging when the doctor told her not to, or some such thing.

Therefore, if laws against abortion could be reinstated, it is very important that only the provider should pay the penalty.

Why does everybody think that punishing women who get abortions will result in woman who miscarry being suspect?

I already explained that when the police actually do try to arrest a woman for getting an abortion, the burden of proof would have to be very high. Higher than in normal cases so as to keep with the idea of innocent until proven guilty.

Women being thrown in prison for getting abortions would be rare, but prosecuting them too should still be on the books so that an open-and-shut case can’t be thrown out because of a technicality.

 

[BornInMarch]

For anyone who still fears that prosecuting a woman for an abortion will result in women who unintentionally miscarry being under suspicion, let me give an example of things that would be considered enough evidence for an arrest and things that would NOT be considered enough evidence.

I will quote this example for anyone who brings the fear up again.

It WOULD be enough evidence if an illegal abortionist was willing to name names and testify in court in exchange for a reduced sentence, if a police raid uncovered a ledger of all the patients who saw an illegal abortionist, if a woman is caught in the act of having an abortion preformed on her, if a DNA test identifies a woman as the mother of a fetus that shows obvious signs of having been aborted (dismemberment, being in a dumpster, high saline levels, etc), if a woman turns herself in to the police and confesses to her crime, or if there is something else that can be proven beyond a doubt.

It would NOT be enough evidence if a woman who miscarried drank wine, rode on roller coasters, smoked, or otherwise could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt to have induced abortion.

It is a crime for a woman to kill her child after the child is born (given a lighter punishment in some states due to the temporary mental imbalances childbirth causes ), so if the law is to protect everybody than it must also make it a crime for a woman to kill her child before it is born. Anything else would be inconsistent with justice.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Back in the days when abortion was illegal wasn’t it only the abortion provider who got in trouble?

Laws against abortion need to be very carefully thought through. Civil laws are different than moral laws. Civil laws require evidence that a crime has happened.

We all know that morally speaking, conception is the beginning of a human life. However, my understanding is that a fertilized egg is about the size of a period at the end of a sentence. If a law existed that declared a fertilized egg to be a legal human, this would be almost impossible to enforce, since no one can look at a woman and see that she is carrying a fertilized egg.

Since civil laws have to be enforced by observable facts, it seems to me, then, that a woman who has a miscarriage could be accused of negligent homicide. A boy friend who hated her could say that she went jogging when the doctor told her not to, or some such thing.

Therefore, if laws against abortion could be reinstated, it is very important that only the provider should pay the penalty.

A sensible conclusion.
In some ways it’s the drunk smoking pregnant woman on roller coasters who would be better criminalised than the one who procures an abortion from a professional. Needless to say the professionals should be prosecuted always.

 

[Sarcelle]

In the days when abortion was illegal, were there any woman who were imprisoned due to procurement of abortion?

 

[Listener]

In the days when abortion was illegal, were there any woman who were imprisoned due to procurement of abortion?

Here is a quote from a site called LifeNews.com:

"Are there any known cases of a woman being indicted or tried for having an abortion in the U.S.?
No. Not since 1922. There are “only two cases in which a woman was charged in any State with participating in her own abortion: from Pennsylvania in 1911 and from Texas in 1922.

There is no documented case since 1922 in which a woman was even charged in an abortion in the United States.

Were women ever prosecuted for SELF-abortion?
Never in the United States. The last was in 1599—the end of the 16th century. As Villanova Law Professor Joseph Dellapenna, author of the encyclopedic book, Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History, has demonstrated, “in the entire history of Anglo-American law, it appears that the only woman to have been charged with a crime for self-abortion was Margaret Webb—in 1599.

Iowa, as early as 1863, held that a woman could not be indicted for a self-abortion."

Women were considered victims of abortion, and many died from them. Punishing the woman would indeed be a brand new slippery slope.

 

[thistle]

Why? If a woman pressed a gun to her four year old son’s head and pulled the trigger then I can assure you that nobody would be calling for “reassurance and spiritual direction”, they’d be calling for justice in the form of a criminal sentencing.

We we all agree that the unborn child is just as much a human person as a born child, then why should a woman who kills one not be given the same punishment she would receive if she killed a born child?

So you are saying that in the case of the reported 1 million abortions yearly in the US all the mothers, plus family members, friends, doctors, nurses involved in each abortion should either be jailed for life or executed. Frankly, that is ridiculous.

 

[Rau]

So you are saying that in the case of the reported 1 million abortions yearly in the US all the mothers, plus family members, friends, doctors, nurses involved in each abortion should either be jailed for life or executed. Frankly, that is ridiculous.

Could you elaborate on your thinking? Do you mean it would be unjust?

 

[BornInMarch]

So you are saying that in the case of the reported 1 million abortions yearly in the US all the mothers, plus family members, friends, doctors, nurses involved in each abortion should either be jailed for life or executed. Frankly, that is ridiculous.

Obviously I’m not calling for retroactive laws - that would be unjust.

But I do think that if we truly consider an unborn child to be just as human as a born child than logic and justice dictate that all who had a hand in it’s death should be prosecuted and jailed after criminalization.

 

[BornInMarch]

Could you elaborate on your thinking? Do you mean it would be unjust?

I think he just means it would be impractical, but I’m not calling for any retroactive laws.

 

[Rau]

I think he just means it would be impractical, but I’m not calling for any retroactive laws.

Let’s see if he shares his thinking.

 

[Listener]

Obviously I’m not calling for retroactive laws - that would be unjust.

But I do think that if we truly consider an unborn child to be just as human as a born child than logic and justice dictate that all who had a hand in it’s death should be prosecuted and jailed after criminalization.

If there is any country in the entire world that ever treated abortion like that, it would be interesting to find out which country it was and how it turned out. Maybe some country in the Middle East???

To imagine what this would be like, just think of the Federal Drug Laws in the USA. One of the states passes a law legalizing marijuana. Then when someone opens a business to dispense medical marijuana, the Feds charge in, shut down the business, and give the person a big fine and/or a jail sentence.

Is that the type of thing we want for women who have abortions? While you were at it, would you throw the father in jail, too?

Before you pass this law, you had better build a few hundred orphanages!

 

[thistle]

Could you elaborate on your thinking? Do you mean it would be unjust?

Really??!! For a woman to have an abortion there will likely be several people involved in the entire process - let’s call them all accomplices and for the sake of argument let’s say 5 including the woman is involved.
Does the OP or you really believe that jailing for life or executing 5 million people a year is practical and just. I do not.

In short, so there is no misunderstanding, I do not believe that would be just.
Before you ask I am anyway against the death penalty.

Unless I have missed a post I haven’t seen the OP being specific in what punishment he/she wants to see imposed.

 

[Rau]

Really??!! For a woman to have an abortion there will likely be several people involved in the entire process - let’s call them all accomplices and for the sake of argument let’s say 5 including the woman is involved.
Does the OP or you really believe that jailing for life or executing 5 million people a year is practical and just. I do not.

In short, so there is no misunderstanding, I do not believe that would be just.
Before you ask I am anyway against the death penalty.

Unless I have missed a post I haven’t seen the OP being specific in what punishment he/she wants to see imposed.

How many abortions would u anticipate in a future world where legislators had the support of voters to make abortion a criminal offence?

You say it would be unjust to punish those involved in killing a child - but can you explain why?