It might seem too early, as many of those who support the Alito draft opinion that would overrule Roe and Casey, needless to affirm the Mississippi law as falling within the permissible restrictions that do not unduly burden a penumbral right, would argue. After all, we’re told, this isn’t the end of abortion, but the return to where the decision ought to be made, state legislatures. It probably won’t change much of anything, it’s argued, so why get all crazy about it?
Of course, Louisiana voted out of committee this week a law making all abortions murder.
Section 2. Acknowledging the sanctity of innocent human life, created in the image of God, which should be equally protected from fertilization to natural death, the legislature hereby declares that the purpose of this Act is to:
(1) Fully recognize the human personhood of an unborn child at all stages of development prior to birth from the moment of fertilization.
They even got the “image of God” in there, because if you’re going to go all theocracy, why not? But the point isn’t whether life begins at fertilization, despite the issues such an assertion raises, but that the loss of fetal life is murder. Drugs? Alcohol? Accidental? Intentional? Natural? Ectopic? Life of mother? Would this be some variation on self-defense to murder charges? Who knows, as we’ve just stumbled into completely uncharted waters. But Louisiana makes it hard for the talking points to claim it’s not going to be a big deal. Murder is a big deal.
In 2007 the conservative magazine National Review hosted an online symposium in response to a column by Anna Quindlen in Newsweek titled “How Much Jail Time for Women Who Have Abortions?” She argued that anti-abortion activists were dodging the reality that overturning Roe v. Wade would bring. If abortion became a crime in the United States, she wrote, those attempting to enforce such a law would have only two choices: “Hold women accountable for a criminal act by sending them to prison, or refuse to criminalize the act in the first place. If you can’t countenance the first,” she wrote, “you have to accept the second. You can’t have it both ways.”
Her point was that if you’re calling abortion murder, then if the law changes, you’re going to have to treat those who get abortions as murderers. Were people prepared to do so?
The reactions to Quindlen’s question were non-responsive, but if the decision yet to come from the Supreme Court reaches as far as the draft suggests it will, dodging or deflecting this question isn’t going to work. If abortion is murder, then what becomes of the murderer? Will there be a new series of murder crimes relative to abortion, with degrees based on the method or length of pregnancy? How do we square one state protecting, even facilitating, women having abortions when their next door neighbor would impose life without parole? Some of you will just pretend this won’t happen, or you won’t care about the dissonance.
But have no doubt that the people who oppose abortion will, in fact, be dictating abortion policy in dozens of states — and their policies will naturally mirror the statements they’ve been making for 50 years, calling abortion murder, and thus, people who have abortions should be punished as murderers. No matter how much commentators like The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan warn them, “Do not, as large dumb misogynists, start waxing on about how if a woman gets an illegal abortion she can be jailed.”
Are you loud and proud in your support of saving millions of babies by banning abortion? Okay, but understand that you are the minority and America doesn’t agree.
The problem is that these beliefs, including sending women to prison for having abortions, aren’t palatable to the broader public. Many Americans oppose some abortions, but very few oppose all abortions. A majority want abortions available during the first trimester and in cases of rape and incest. As National Review’s editors argued in 2015, while favoring abortion bans with zero exceptions “is a defensible position,” “it is a highly unpopular one.” Best, they argued, not to discuss it. Besides, the editors continued, “perhaps in a post-Roe v. Wade America a state or two would ban abortion even in cases of rape, and those seeking such abortions would have to cross state lines. But even that is on the far edge of possibility.”
This isn’t an argument and your excuses notwithstanding, it’s time to face the cold hard question already raised. So what do you plan to do about women who “murder”?
And now here we are. The questions that were so easily waved away by some abortion opponents before will need to be answered. If abortion is to be penalized as a felony in some states and an increasing number of women are performing abortions themselves using drugs delivered by mail, would those women be punished? If so, how? For how long?
Will it matter if your “murder” is committed the next day by pill? Will it matter that “fertilization” was the result of rape or incest? Will it matter that the murder involved an ectopic pregnancy that would never have resulted in a live birth, but was likely to result in a woman’s death? If it’s murder, how do you accommodate these questions? And even if it’s just your ordinary, run of the mill pregnancy that’s terminated as soon as the woman realizes she’s pregnant (forget about the issues of availability and cost), does she get life in prison? Does she get what a murderer gets, because she is, as you contend, a murderer.
And if your answer is yes, she’s a murderer and deserves to get life in prison, America disagrees.
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The press has been reporting that Michigan has an abortion law from 1931 that was never repealed after Roe. It punishes women who get abortions by up to 4 years in prison. It’s unenforceable now, but if Roe and Casey are overturned, does this law now become enforceable?
Yes.
It’s our daily reminder that the religious right is every bit as extreme as the progressive left. Since progressivism seems to be a religious state, it’s funny to observe how mixing religion into your politics squeezes things like empathy completely out of one’s thinking. Of course, each of those groups would try to tell you that their religion includes tolerance and empathy, but those of us outside can see that isn’t true.
I can’t address your state to state quandary except to say that charging rape victims who abort with murder is every bit as extreme as saying that abortion should be legal up to the moment of birth. But the zealots are in charge everywhere now so what can one do?
And any prosecutor who charges a woman or doctor with murder for terminating an ectopic pregnancy deserves a special place in hell.
It’s all religion, secular or not.
I know you hate “tummy rubs”, but this is spot on.
Blind acceptance of/ adherence to ideology is a cause for concern no matter what the ideology is.
If adopted in anything like its three-month-old draft form, Dobbs will return the question to the state legislatures, where it always should have been. And if those legislatures enact laws significantly at odds with the will of the majority of their constituents, they face electoral consequences. That’s how democratic republics work.
The Louisiana (or Georgia, or…) legislature shouldn’t care much what “America” thinks on a question. “America” doesn’t get a say (despite attempts to do so, e.g., California prohibiting any state travel to Georgia), beyond constitutional requirements and relevant (constitutional) federal legislation. What they ought to be doing is legislating in accordance with the will of their own electorate.
There really is an inconsistency here. On the one hand, there’s the stated belief that there’s broad public support for abortion. On the other hand, there’s absolute hysteria about what might happen if the people get more of a say in the matter. These just don’t go together–unless you believe that democracy itself has completely broken down.
Laws aren’t enacted by referendum but by representatives in a republican form of government. This is the wedge being played by right and left, where we are left to choose between Trump on the right and woke on the left, even though the majority wants neither. Since the political universe isn’t made up of one issue, here abortion, we are constrained to pick based on whatever overarching issue/outcome seems more critical in the long run, even if we vehemently disagree with other issues that matter, but not enough to vote them first.
So maybe the leak came from one(or more) Justices, who decided that they had enough of legislators creating all these flaming crocks that get dumped into the lap of the Court. They have decided to recuse themselves from the issue and let the politicians take the heat for the mess.
In many states, laws are enacted by referendum (and, in some cases, by initiative). But leaving that aside (because I was also talking about a republican form of government), “vehemently disagree” and “don’t care enough to vote on that basis” really aren’t consistent. In this regard, you treat abortion the same as any other issue. But is the ordinary democratic process not enough to result in the states’ laws adequately approximating the desires of their respective citizens in other areas? If it is, why believe that the issue of abortion will be an exception? If not, well, we might as well burn the system to the ground, because that’s pretty much the point.
“Life begins at conception” isn’t a fringe view. Minority it may be, and certainly most on the left have ignored that issue, perhaps hoping it’ll go away if they pretend it doesn’t exist, but this isn’t something that’s the exclusive province of flat-earthers. Quite a lot of people hold that view, and not only for religious reasons. And if you deny that, there’s precious little principled stopping point before birth. But if you accept that, it’s pretty hard to avoid concluding that the deliberate killing of that unborn baby is murder. And indeed, most states (and Congress) do so conclude and have so legislated–excluding cases whether the mother sought or consented to the killing.
I have strong views on many controversial issues. Some might be called vehement. But they don’t all go to one side or the other, leaving me to make hard choices because no candidate reflects all my “vehement” views. I’m not the only one facing this conundrum.
That life begins at conception isn’t a fringe view, even if a significant minority view. But that women who have a first trimester abortion should go to prison as murderers is. No, it can’t be rationally reconciled. Many public views can’t. People often fail to think their views through to fruition.
This is really the crux of the issue. The real world isn’t single-issue. It’s what prevents majority opinion on one issue from translating to election results on that issue. If the only way to prevent a fetus-whacking mother from a sentence of life plus cancer is to elect a wokey, bow-to-the-hat-on-the-pole fanatic, a lot of people who think some abortions should be legal won’t be prepared to go there.
As problematic Row v Wade was in the first place, this post is an illustration why the decision works better at the Federal level.
The whole thing’s a can of worms from hell.
Hypothetically…If PA went full ‘Alabama’, and a woman “wants a ride to Delaware”, is the poor dumb hack driving the cab now an accessory to murder?
I suppose I should write the third act of this song, where Harry’s dreaming of flying his cab while he’s sitting in jail.
The possibilities are mind-blowing.
From Article IV, Section 2, of the US Constitution:
“A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.”
See also 18 USC 3182.
Will NY judges be happy to extradite those charged in Louisiana with “abortion murder”?
Can you imagine?
This surprises you, really? It is the expected response to “abortion for any reason, at any cost, at any time, even in the delivery room shoving a scalpel into a baby’s spinal column while being delivered. This is the result of decades of abortion extremism pushing the boundaries farther out every year and it is despairing to see this come out, but not unexpected.
This bill is wrong, and I say that as one who believes that life begins at conception, and I don’t think this belief is as minority as abortion proponents would like everyone to believe. The legislature is forgetting that being pro-life means, or should, being compassionate and caring. The women going through an abortion are as much victims as the child, victims of an ideology that steals most sacred gift a woman has, the ability to bring forth life, and tells them to celebrate that theft. These women need compassion and forgiveness not accusation and condemnation.
Unfortunately the victims of this will continue to be those who need protection the most, children and their mothers, usually poor and overwhelmingly brown and black.
What is most interesting about the recent law in Louisiana is that currently the civil code says.
CC25
Art. 25. Commencement and end of natural personality
Natural personality commences from the moment of live birth and terminates at death.
Acts 1987, No. 125, §1, eff. Jan. 1, 1988.
Hard to reconcile that with current efforts.
Now we get to the issue everyone had danced around since Roe was decided: When does life start? I don’t know; and I don’t know anyone that can say with any moral certainty. And it would seem to me that there have to be exceptions for rape (including incest) and profound birth defects. I can’t imagine rational people talking about sending women to jail for getting an abortion (extremists on both sides aren’t rational IMO). I pray a workable pan can be developed. Many European nations allow pretty much unlimited abortion to 12 weeks then it gets progressively harder to obtain. That could be a good middle ground to try here.
I thank God I don’t have to make that decision. I know women that have. None of them reached it lightly and I think it came with a heavy mental price.