Why do so many in the pro-life movement want no punishment for women if abortion was illegal?

[LightBound]

The same punishment you would expect for any other child killer.

And it is this kind of mentality that will keep abortion legal in the US. Just like the thread you started months ago, you show NO compassion for the women seeking an abortion and with that, you only confirm what the pro-aborts like to throw at the prolifers. You are hell-bent on punishing women with a prison sentence instead of focusing on WHO is providing the abortions. Try showing a fraction of the compassion you have for drug addicts towards the women that seek an abortion and you focus on punishing the providers, not the women who are obviously not in their right minds if they are aborting their own child!! Otherwise, you are only fueling the fire that the prochoice groups have in keeping abortion legal. You are an example of why prolifers shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to topics like this. In your zeal to “avenge the unborn”, you set the prolife movement back to the era that prochoicers love to haul out with their arguments for keeping it legal. Sorry, but that is what you are doing and it does the prolife movement NO GOOD! Please keep your mouth shut and you’ll get more done!

 

[BornInMarch]

Punishing these women would be kind of like punishing people who attempt suicide. They need help more than prison time.

Then again, fines may be more effective. If they are aborting due to real or perceived poverty, the risk of a hefty fine may deter them.

If a woman has a six year old son and she pays a man to murder him for her, would you consider it wrong to imprison her?

If you think women who get abortions shouldn’t be punished, then that suggests that you don’t really consider abortion to be murder or the unborn to be deserving of legal protection.

 

[BornInMarch]

Questions like the one in the OP are merely a “dog whistle” for “boo, the pro-life movement stinks, let’s all be pro-choice and abort ourselves into oblivion.”

In other words: don’t rise to the bait.

I don’t think so.

I think it’s more along the lines of “we need to be logically consistent and **actually **treat abortion like murder”.

 

[BornInMarch]

And it is this kind of mentality that will keep abortion legal in the US. Just like the thread you started months ago, you show NO compassion for the women seeking an abortion and with that, you only confirm what the pro-aborts like to throw at the prolifers. You are hell-bent on punishing women with a prison sentence instead of focusing on WHO is providing the abortions. Try showing a fraction of the compassion you have for drug addicts towards the women that seek an abortion and you focus on punishing the providers, not the women who are obviously not in their right minds if they are aborting their own child!!

I feel I should make a distinction. When I say I want to punish women who willfully get an abortion, I mean I only want to punish the ones who did so WILLFULLY. If someone was coerced, than the person who coerced her gets imprisoned instead. If someone was suffering from a mental illness then that is counted as a mitigating factor.

In any case, I feel more sympathy for the victim of the murder than I do for the murderer. Someone who murders their own child is difficult to feel sympathy for, and many ARE in their right minds and are fully sane.

I feel I am just being logically consistent.

Point 1: I believe that somebody who commits murder should be punished by the legal system.
Point 2: I believe that abortion is murder and that people who get abortions are murderers.
Conclusion: I believe that somebody who who gets an abortion should be punished by the legal system.

 

[RPRPsych]

I don’t think so.

I think it’s more along the lines of “we need to be logically consistent and **actually **treat abortion like murder”.

Have you checked the OP’s previous posting history?

He thinks married priests should become the norm.

Not hard to pick up the stench of liberalism from stuff like that…

 

[casslean]

I feel I should make a distinction. When I say I want to punish women who willfully get an abortion, I mean I only want to punish the ones who did so WILLFULLY. If someone was coerced, than the person who coerced her gets imprisoned instead. If someone was suffering from a mental illness then that is counted as a mitigating factor.

So what counts as coercion? Refusing to support her if she delivers the child? Threatening to disown her? What about parents who spend years indoctrinating their daughter with the belief that if she become pregnant, they would never forgive her? Are they coercing their child?

Because if you think they aren’t, you frankly don’t have any kind of grasp on the complexity of this situation or the challenges faced by women with unplanned pregnancies. And that close-mindedness is what will ensure that abortion remains legal.

Anyone who thinks you can legalize morality and force society to follow is either naive or has been living with their heads in the sand for the last thirty years. We used to legislate morality. Abortion was illegal. Euthanasia was illegal. If you can’t keep society informed and understanding as to why these actions are immoral and why that is important, the laws simply change.

 

[Sarcelle]

So what counts as coercion? Refusing to support her if she delivers the child? Threatening to disown her? What about parents who spend years indoctrinating their daughter with the belief that if she become pregnant, they would never forgive her? Are they coercing their child?

Because if you think they aren’t, you frankly don’t have any kind of grasp on the complexity of this situation or the challenges faced by women with unplanned pregnancies. And that close-mindedness is what will ensure that abortion remains legal.

Anyone who thinks you can legalize morality and force society to follow is either naive or has been living with their heads in the sand for the last thirty years. We used to legislate morality. Abortion was illegal. Euthanasia was illegal. If you can’t keep society informed and understanding as to why these actions are immoral and why that is important, the laws simply change.

We already enforce morality. Last time I checked it was still immoral to defraud and steal from people. It also is illegal to defraud and steal from people. So you see morality being legislated.

Murder is also immoral and it is also illegal.

So if killing the unborn is murder it should also be illegal and therefore should be punished.

What was the punishment before abortion was made legal? We could go from there.

 

[pnewton]

Abortion is murder. If a woman pays someone to kill her 6 year old child then NOBODY would be arguing that “Oh she needs support, not punishment!” or “Punish the guy she hired but let her go free!”.

That’s the pessimism I talked about. You have to remember that justice is a process, not a race with a finish line. Can you really predict the public view on abortion in 100 years? Or 200 years? Have a bit more hope.

And I would respond it would be better to have a bit more realism. Abortion is not even illegal and this type of talk will make it impossible to ever go down the road of limiting abortion: a goal far more important than punishing people. This talk lays out the perfect slippery slope, agenda-driven, progressive view that has characterized the gay agenda. I view it as counter-productive.

Maybe this my answer to the OP. I am not in favor of punishment because I deem the lives of the innocent and the goal of stopping legal abortion is so important as to completely overshadow the goal of punishment, and I see the latter as something that would make the first practically impossible.

As to the future, I cannot even predict humanity will exist 200 years from now, or America, or society as we now know it. I never have an opinion based on anything that speculative.

 

[Simeon_Hovey]

First, there is no excuse for a woman getting pregnant today since birth control is freely available from the counties. So if women willingly make this choice for which they know there are consequences, why then should anyone else be responsible?

The Pro Choice people state that it is the woman’s body so this is her right to choose, is it not then likewise her responsibility?

I do realize there are exceptions to this such as rape.

And I do grow weary of a country in which there are so many demands for ever more rights, which all too often means people think that others have the responsibility to pay for their rights. What ever happened to the responsibility that comes with a right?

My father often told me, “In life we all have to make choices, and then we have to live with the consequences of our decisions.”

The following is only my belief, and it is that when each of us stands before Jesus we won’t get away with blaming others as much as many would like to believe.

 

[kozlosap]

First, there is no excuse for a woman getting pregnant today since birth control is freely available from the counties. So if women willingly make this choice for which they know there are consequences, why then should anyone else be responsible?

The Pro Choice people state that it is the woman’s body so this is her right to choose, is it not then likewise her responsibility?

I do realize there are exceptions to this such as rape.

And I do grow weary of a country in which there are so many demands for ever more rights, which all too often means people think that others have the responsibility to pay for their rights. What ever happened to the responsibility that comes with a right?

My father often told me, “In life we all have to make choices, and then we have to live with the consequences of our decisions.”

The following is only my belief, and it is that when each of us stands before Jesus we won’t get away with blaming others as much as many would like to believe.

Yes, only women make the choice to make love or have sex.

 

[BornInMarch]

Have you checked the OP’s previous posting history?

He thinks married priests should become the norm.

Not hard to pick up the stench of liberalism from stuff like that…

If that’s the case then I suppose it’s also possible that he was also trying to discredit the pro-life movement.

I recall finding reading an argument from pro-abortion blogger; the blogger arguing that pro-life people are only pretending to value the lives of unborn babies, and was basing this on the fact that many pro-life people don’t want to send women to prison for abortions despite calling abortion murder. At the time I thought the argument was fallacious (I would be just fine sending someone to prison for murdering a child, even an unborn one), but indeed many pro-life people want women who get abortions to go unpunished and pro-abortion people often use that as evidence of disingenuity.

Of course that is not the only way in which pro-life people can be logically inconsistent. Some want to allow abortion in instances of rape or incest, some don’t even want to repeal Roe v. Wade and are just fine working to reduce abortion while allowing it to remain legal.

But no matter how many pro-life people have inconsistent views, the basic idea that an unborn child is a human being deserving of protection and rights remains true and valid.

 

[BornInMarch]

In Chile, one of the few nations left where Abortion is still illegal, the act of seeking an abortion is punished with 3-5 years in prison.

While we could learn from our forebears, I think that our neighbors to the south also have a thing or two to teach us.

 

[pnewton]

At the time I thought the argument was fallacious (I would be just fine sending someone to prison for murdering a child, even an unborn one), but indeed many pro-life people want women who get abortions to go unpunished and pro-abortion people often use that as evidence of disingenuity.
.

The argument is still fallacious. I am consistent, whether others agree with me or not. I think we have forgotten the title of the thread. The OP wanted to know why, that is the reasoning, that would lead people to such an opinion. There are some here that believe that these women should be punishes severely. You cannot answer the question because the thread is about those that do* not *want this.

By the way, one legitimate fallacy is argumentum ad populum, even if this “many people” exists.

 

[BornInMarch]

So what counts as coercion? Refusing to support her if she delivers the child? Threatening to disown her? What about parents who spend years indoctrinating their daughter with the belief that if she become pregnant, they would never forgive her? Are they coercing their child?

Yes, they are coercing her. The parents should be prosecuted instead of the daughter (for killing their grandchild and for emotionally abusing their daughter). Duress is already a legal defense for an otherwise criminal action, so reason dictates it should be a reasonable defense here.

Additionally I think that trying a child as an adult is madness, and that goes for any crime. We give children lighter sentences because they’re often too young to understand the gravity of their actions.

When I say that people who seek out abortions should be punished, I am not talking about scared 15 year old girls. I am talking about adult women who get five abortions and who refer to their murdered children as “parasites”.

Because if you think they aren’t, you frankly don’t have any kind of grasp on the complexity of this situation or the challenges faced by women with unplanned pregnancies. And that close-mindedness is what will ensure that abortion remains legal.

I understand the complexities because, as surprising as you might find it, I thought out my view and did research. The unborn should be protected by the law, but they should also be protected by resources and organizations that prevent unplanned pregnancies from being the end of the world.

As for law, we live in a democracy. The only thing we need to make abortion illegal is to convince enough people that it is unconscionable, and we can only do that if we are logically consistent in our views.

Anyone who thinks you can legalize morality and force society to follow is either naive or has been living with their heads in the sand for the last thirty years. We used to legislate morality. Abortion was illegal. Euthanasia was illegal. If you can’t keep society informed and understanding as to why these actions are immoral and why that is important, the laws simply change.

This is something I can agree with; there’s no finish line with enshrining our cherished values in law, because once we do that we’ll have to remain vigilant to safeguard our work.

 

[BornInMarch]

We already enforce morality. Last time I checked it was still immoral to defraud and steal from people. It also is illegal to defraud and steal from people. So you see morality being legislated.

**Murder is also immoral and it is also illegal.

So if killing the unborn is murder it should also be illegal and therefore should be punished.**

What was the punishment before abortion was made legal? We could go from there.

I agree with this, especially the bolded line. If killing the unborn is murder it should be illegal and therefore should be punished. That’s the only logically consistent ethical stance.

I do not think that undercutting our beliefs (such as NOT prosecuting those who murder unborn children, or by allowing people to murder unborn children in “hard cases” [rape, incest, defects, etc]) will help us reach a world without abortions. I think it actually hinders that goal, as it allows the opposition to accuse the anti-abortion movement of disingenuity.

In Chile, one of the few countries where abortion is still illegal, a woman who seeks out an abortion can face 3-5 years imprisonment. I think we can learn something from our Chilean Neighbors.

 

[AFerri48]

Um, I’m very pro-life and wasn’t trying to discredit anything. That guy that was searching through my post history grasped probably the one post where I said something that is, I guess, slightly liberal and then used it as an ad hominem.

 

[RPRPsych]

Um, I’m very pro-life and wasn’t trying to discredit anything. That guy that was searching through my post history grasped probably the one post where I said something that is, I guess, slightly liberal and then used it as an ad hominem.

 

[BornInMarch]

Um, I’m very pro-life and wasn’t trying to discredit anything. That guy that was searching through my post history grasped probably the one post where I said something that is, I guess, slightly liberal and then used it as an ad hominem.

Ok then, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

 

[Wampa]

Um, I’m very pro-life and wasn’t trying to discredit anything. That guy that was searching through my post history grasped probably the one post where I said something that is, I guess, slightly liberal and then used it as an ad hominem.

Actually, I’ll back you up on this. I went through your post history after that post (because I’m quick to drop people on my ignore list if their posting history indicates there’s no value in me spending time on their posts, e.g. being excessively partisan on either side, or excessive dissent from Church teaching). Aside from that one post, I didn’t see anything that raised my hackles

 

[RPRPsych]

The fact still remains that this is an overly simplistic way of viewing the problem.

As former posters have mentioned, several abortions take place under some form of duress. Duress tends to invalidate or at least diminish the validity of consent to an act or procedure, which is something that even the ancients recognized.

Moreover, it takes several to tango in this particular case. For abortion to be legal, the government must also be complicit, as well as healthcare professionals, the pharmaceutical industry, the woman’s family and the child’s father (who would be accessories to murder at the very least), and so on.

Finally, let’s not get too bloodthirsty. Remember that even in the days of the Inquistion, not everyone tried or even convicted by their courts was burned at the stake - that’s a Protestant canard. Many of them received lesser punishments.

The bottom line, at least from where I’m sitting is:

1. It’s futile to punish only the woman when so many guilty parties are involved. At the very least, the father (and possibly other accessories, especially the concerned medical “professional” / abortionist) must also receive punishment (something that several men on this forum will furiously reject, given that they subscribe to a rather worldly agenda.)
2. Lesser punishments seem to be completely appropriate, but they must also carry with them the possibility of rehabilitation and repentance. (For example, community service in an orphanage, or at a facility for physically or mentally disabled children.)
3. Serial murder is a greater offence than a single murder; punishments should definitely be heavier for abortionists than for the mother or father.
4. Arguments from outrage are silly.
5. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Here is a good example of what’s wrong with married priests: barnhardt.biz/2016/12/28/mailbag-a-heterosexual-aka-normal-celibate-priest-weighs-in/ (not the most credible website, I agree, but I’m referring to the priest’s letter, not the sociopolitical blather that forms the rest of that blog. )