Newsweek article.

[sofiaviolet]

How Much Jail Time?


When I think about abortion, I think of its social causes and effects, about why individual women have or don't have abortions, about what I would do if I became pregnant or if abortion were to be criminalized. I've never actually given much thought to the legal ramifications of criminalizing abortion (jail time? fines? for doctors? for women?).

Neither, apparently, have the people on the anti-abortion side of things.

Comments

[looneyluna.livejournal.com]

There was a NY Times piece in the magazine about 8 months ago that looked at El Salvador where abortion is criminalized and the impact upon women's lives. Doctors are supposed to call the police if they suspect a patient has had a back alley abortion, and doctors providing the abortion can be jailed. It a was truly frightening glimpse at the reality that some women face.

In contrast, there was a piece in the Atlantic Monthly that discussed that despite all the rhetoric about wanting to ban abortion, the conservatives in power don't really want that to happen because it would destroy what is possibly the most polarizing issue in American politics and thus negate abortion being a rallying point for the religious right. Let's hope this is true. I'd rather endless debates than lack of choice.

The only thought I've given to the criminalization though is that I would protest and work with the cause to get abortion legal again, but I never really considered until the article about El Salvador that people would be jailed. It makes one take pause.

[sofiaviolet]

The people up top who are pulling the strings may not really want abortion criminalized, but the people for which that's a rallying point definitely do. And it's the ordinary people that make me worry.

[littlewings04.livejournal.com]

I watched an anti-choice rally today on the streets of my new home town in western Maryland. These women--women--were standing along the side of the main commercial drag in west Frederick, screaming at cars as they passed, holding up signs of bloodied fetuses, and slogans about how abortion hurts women. And I couldn't help but wonder if they realised that illegal abortions hurt more.

When you confront anti-choicers on the fallacies of their rhetoric, they fall apart. They don't have the intellectual honesty to defend their position. Some abortions are okay, but only the really, really important ones (usually meaning the ones that violate their idea about punishing women for sexual activity, ie rape and incest, and the ones they themselves have. Remember, the only moral abortion is my abortion). Abortion should be illegal, but they have no idea about the penalty. Should back-alley abortions be policed, and if so, who's prosecuted--doctor, patient or both? For how long? And if all life is sacred, how do you feel about social services, welfare, war and the death penalty? (It's hard to respect anyone who says life is sacred until birth, then they can fend for themselves.)

I hate these nutjobs. I hate anyone who decides they get to make medical decisions for me. When men's sexual choices are policed as strictly as women's, then all things will be equal. We'll also be living in a police state, and me and Mssrs Smith and Wesson will be living out in the boonies somewhere in a compound of our own making, thank you very much.

[sofiaviolet]

Can I come join you in your compound?

[tragicwhore.livejournal.com]

"it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained."

this is a phenomenon I refer to as "buyer's remorse"

you ever buy something, and then get home and go "why did I buy this? I didn't want this" but the store won't take returns. then you go back anyway and argue with management that they should break policy because you made a choice that you now regret.

people in general, americans especially REFUSE to take responsibility for their own actions. making abortion illegal because some one might regret getting one is essentially absolving a woman of all accountability for her own actions.

"I killed my baby and now I'm sad inside and wish I hadn't done it. abortions shouldn't be legal"

if I heard some one say this my first thoughts would be:

1: ok, and as soon as they pass that law, I'll report you so you can be tried and sentenced, since you really think what YOU CHOSE TO DO should be illegal.

2: the choice was made of your own free will, don't go crying to some one else that you made a bad decision, so clearly no one should have the right to make it either.

3: good, you fucking deserve to be sad inside, because if you really feel that way then you clearly didn't give it enough thought before you went through with it. when you make a serious life altering decision without giving it proper thought, you have no one to blame for the outcome, good or bad, but your self.


I'll stop now before I rant anymore.

[sofiaviolet]

I can definitely understand feeling sad even if one has put a lot of thought into whether to have an abortion, but one grieves for a while and then moves on.

Either it was the right choice for the situation, or it was the wrong choice and you regret it but you move on anyway, because sometimes you make decisions that you regret, but so does everyone.

[excursively.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of people consider what should happen to the doctors who perform abortions (including the death penalty, as evidenced by a number of, um, unsanctioned convictions) but it is fairly fascinating to watch people turn this question over in their minds.

Most of the activists I know have rather strong feelings either way about legalizing drugs and the possible penalties for drug cultivation, possession, use, etc. as well as for distribution. These women likely also would have very strong feelings about this. The idea of penalties for an illegal abortion, however, seems to be lost in the passion and the religious convictions of these women, like it almost doesn't even effing matter. Seriously, life in prison? You believe that?

I don't know if it's intellectual honesty or just capacity.

Note to future: This is what happens when you mix politics and faith. And looneyluna's second paragraph would not surprise me one bit if true (admittedly, I'm one of those conspiracy people, however).

[sofiaviolet]

I think for a lot of them, it's just a blind spot. They've never been asked to think about the penalties in a world where abortion is illegal, and it hasn't occurred to them to think about it. Some people might be able to articulate what they think should happen if they took the time to figure out what they think, but others can't.