Pro-Life People Only: How Should Abortion be Punished?

[TJ in Oregon]

The point of being pro-life is the belief that human life has intrinsic value. That does not mean a simple optimization to maximize the number of human lives but a recognition that murder is wrong. Capital punishment is not necessarily murder though in modern America it is almost certainly an unjustly severe punishment. A more fitting punishment would be something like 2nd degree murder, though admittedly we would need to work up to the point where such a sentence could be given.

[Virginiá]

Well this thread is interesting. I'm just glad that you "let's charge them with murder"-people are never going to get your way on this. You'll be lucky to get a 20-week ban.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Why not just admit that you hate anyone that doesn't have a dick and we can just move on with our day. (I'm obviously not talking to you Maddy, but holy christ, most of these answers...)

Uh, this has nothing to do with Sexism for anyone, except for maybe Naso and Rick Santorum. It's about recognizing abortion for what it is - removing a human life from this world.

[/]

Why not just admit that you hate anyone that doesn't have a dick and we can just move on with our day. (I'm obviously not talking to you Maddy, but holy christ, most of these answers...)

Uh, this has nothing to do with Sexism for anyone, except for maybe Naso and Rick Santorum. It's about recognizing abortion for what it is - removing a human life from this world.

but who care about the human life if it cannot feels

[Virginiá]

Uh, this has nothing to do with Sexism for anyone, except for maybe Naso and Rick Santorum. It's about recognizing abortion for what it is - removing a human life from this world.

but who care about the human life if it cannot feels

Notice to people with depression and alexithymia: prepare to be aborted.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Why not just admit that you hate anyone that doesn't have a dick and we can just move on with our day. (I'm obviously not talking to you Maddy, but holy christ, most of these answers...)

Uh, this has nothing to do with Sexism for anyone, except for maybe Naso and Rick Santorum. It's about recognizing abortion for what it is - removing a human life from this world.

but who care about the human life if it cannot feels

Not to defend people who are openly salivating over the prospect of legally punishing women for their personal tragedies, but this doesn't really make much sense. Every lack of sensitivity or consciousness that's true of feti (in general) is also true of other classes of people who are indisputedly treated as alive.

ETA: Virginia beat me to it.

[°Leprechaun]

You know, if we just kill everybody, then there won't be any more abortions! Ever!

Definitely something to consider.

There's a certain logic here.

If we were ever to use all those nuclear weapons, we could certainly kill a lot of people.
Where do pro-lifers stand on nuclear disarmament?

[Clark Kent]

Definitely not the death penalty (it should be abolished anyways). I'm uncomfortable with prison time for the mother. Maybe heavy fines for the doctor (and/or a short prison sentence) and much lighter fines for the mother if it's the first offense? Or maybe consider it the same as voluntary manslaughter, I don't know.

[Virginiá]

Pretty sure people with alexithymia can still feel but just don't really understand what they're feeling.

But really, unless an organism has emotions and/or retrievable memories, they should not matter. At all.

If you can't understand it, then for that person it's just something that happens with none of the consequences of real emotions. It might as well not exist for them.

And bear, people without emotions don't matter? You don't really believe that, do you?

[DavidB.]

For all that 'choice' gets talked about positively in the context of abortion, it's really not perceived/interpreted as a free act for a lot of women (some obscene percentage of abortions in America are flat-out coerced, and that's without even considering real or perceived socioeconomic impossibilities), having an abortion is often a canary in the coal mine for other problems for which the woman really can't in any sense be blamed, and even though there are also plenty of times in which that isn't the case it doesn't strike me as at all a good idea to attempt to use penal law to determine what a post-abortive woman's motivations are.

These are actually relatively good reasons for abortion to be legal despite being morally wrong, so if I'm going to bite the bullet and insist that those reasons don't outweigh the state interest in preventing the killing of the very young (which is a difficult moral conclusion to come to and really not the no-brainer I falsely made it out to be in the recent thread in US General) then I owe it to women in these kinds of situations to at least not advocate punishing them. (I also owe it to them to advocate a safe and equitable economic system and legally ensured social protections, so as to not turn being 'pro-life' into some sort of sick combination of pregnancy fetishism and the mere addition paradox. Which is what I think a lot of the 'pro-life' movement does, and which is why I'm still very uncomfortable sharing my basic position on abortion with a lot of the people with whom I share it.)

Thank you for elaborating on this. As I said, I haven't made up my mind on this yet, but I can definitely understand where your considerations come from

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

You know, if we just kill everybody, then there won't be any more abortions! Ever!

Definitely something to consider.

There's a certain logic here.

If we were ever to use all those nuclear weapons, we could certainly kill a lot of people.
Where do pro-lifers stand on nuclear disarmament?

Probably not true for all the wanna-be murderers in this thread, but the nuclear arsenal sure should be brought down, perhaps not to zero but quite substantially through bilateral measures. You still need to project a degree of power though they should never be used. I tend to be anti-war altogether, but it's a bit dangerous to give up all power and negotiation like that.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The woman generally shouldn't be punished, not because the act isn't wrong but because there are good sociological reasons not to. I don't know how the doctor should be punished but it should be a punishment that's existent and significant but not so steep as to ignore the fact that most people do, psychologically, process abortion and murder as at least different in degree (whether this difference in perception has any basis in reality is not really the point; difference in perception is relevant in a democratic society).

pretty much agree with this.   

The state has a role in stopping abortion as far as is possible without having some sort of pregnancy police. But the point should never be to be vindictive. I think if you want to stop abortion and not just drive abortion underground, you don't punish the woman, since women who regret their abortions may play a crucial role in the legal battle against abortion, and you want them to be able to receive help so they don't end up in the same situation and feel like they have to make the same choice again. 

It is taking a human life, and a tragic and undeniably violent thing, but context and biological and sociological reality matters in how you respond.  To insist that if you don't treat it exactly like murder in a criminal sense, you don't really believe in protecting this life, is I think to have disordered priorities. 

[This account no longer in use.]

In my opinion, we would have less abortions if proper sex education was required, and if birth control was easier to get.

[RR]

In my opinion, we would have less abortions if proper sex education was required, and if birth control was easier to get.

Agree with this. More important to reduce the amount of abortions than focus on punishment. If public education actually explained what abortion was, what it means in a bigger context and why it is controversial to begin with, then I think far more people would be pro-life. Making it harder to get guns won't eliminate gun violence, same principle applies.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

In my opinion, we would have less abortions if proper sex education was required, and if birth control was easier to get.

Agree with this. More important to reduce the amount of abortions than focus on punishment. If public education actually explained what abortion was, what it means in a bigger context and why it is controversial to begin with, then I think far more people would be pro-life. Making it harder to get guns won't eliminate gun violence, same principle applies.

I'm pretty sure most people know what abortion is. Nobody is going to say "Oh no, the embryo dies in an abortion! I thought it gets to live on a farm upstate!"

[afleitch]

For all that 'choice' gets talked about positively in the context of abortion, it's really not perceived/interpreted as a free act for a lot of women (some obscene percentage of abortions in America are flat-out coerced, and that's without even considering real or perceived socioeconomic impossibilities), having an abortion is often a canary in the coal mine for other problems for which the woman really can't in any sense be blamed, and even though there are also plenty of times in which that isn't the case it doesn't strike me as at all a good idea to attempt to use penal law to determine what a post-abortive woman's motivations are.

These are actually relatively good reasons for abortion to be legal despite being morally wrong, so if I'm going to bite the bullet and insist that those reasons don't outweigh the state interest in preventing the killing of the very young (which is a difficult moral conclusion to come to and really not the no-brainer I falsely made it out to be in the recent thread in US General) then I owe it to women in these kinds of situations to at least not advocate punishing them. (I also owe it to them to advocate a safe and equitable economic system and legally ensured social protections, so as to not turn being 'pro-life' into some sort of sick combination of pregnancy fetishism and the mere addition paradox. Which is what I think a lot of the 'pro-life' movement does, and which is why I'm still very uncomfortable sharing my basic position on abortion with a lot of the people with whom I share it.)

Reproductive coercion is domestic abuse. On that basis it is only fair to note that this also includes women being pressured into keeping unwanted children (and yes for communal religious reasons and promises of financial assistance etc) The ratio of this is statistically balanced so I think it is unfair to base your reasoning on just one face of this exploitation. The effect of your position is to perhaps unintentionally tacitly endorse the other side of this exploitation which I think you ought to consider.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

For all that 'choice' gets talked about positively in the context of abortion, it's really not perceived/interpreted as a free act for a lot of women (some obscene percentage of abortions in America are flat-out coerced, and that's without even considering real or perceived socioeconomic impossibilities), having an abortion is often a canary in the coal mine for other problems for which the woman really can't in any sense be blamed, and even though there are also plenty of times in which that isn't the case it doesn't strike me as at all a good idea to attempt to use penal law to determine what a post-abortive woman's motivations are.

These are actually relatively good reasons for abortion to be legal despite being morally wrong, so if I'm going to bite the bullet and insist that those reasons don't outweigh the state interest in preventing the killing of the very young (which is a difficult moral conclusion to come to and really not the no-brainer I falsely made it out to be in the recent thread in US General) then I owe it to women in these kinds of situations to at least not advocate punishing them. (I also owe it to them to advocate a safe and equitable economic system and legally ensured social protections, so as to not turn being 'pro-life' into some sort of sick combination of pregnancy fetishism and the mere addition paradox. Which is what I think a lot of the 'pro-life' movement does, and which is why I'm still very uncomfortable sharing my basic position on abortion with a lot of the people with whom I share it.)

Reproductive coercion is domestic abuse. On that basis it is only fair to note that this also includes women being pressured into keeping unwanted children (and yes for communal religious reasons and promises of financial assistance etc) The ratio of this is statistically balanced so I think it is unfair to base your reasoning on just one face of this exploitation. The effect of your position is to perhaps unintentionally tacitly endorse the other side of this exploitation which I think you ought to consider.

Yes, women being forced to keep unwanted children is absolutely also abusive.

I'm generally of the position that we need to change the culture around this first and foremost (why are there children who are constructed/positioned as being 'unwanted' (in this sense)? Surely someone wants them; surely someone wants any child!) rather than focusing on criminal law. I'm 'on the pro-life side' because I am nevertheless willing to entertain anti-abortion policy/legal ideas, but to the extent that I'm more interested in the issue morally than legally I guess I'd be more in line with Tanaka Mitsu and other early seventies Japanese feminist activists, one of whose rallying cries was 'We need a society where women can give birth in peace! We need a society where women become inclined to give birth!' Part of the reason I've become more vocally interested in abortion as an issue and in 'pro-life' as a way of characterizing my thinking about it lately is that I recently had the opportunity to read some work that the contemporary philosopher Morioka Masahiro has done on the history of Japanese grassroots bioethics (Japan is the only country I'm aware of in which 'grassroots bioethics' is a thing). You'll probably remember that I brought up concepts from this tradition in the context of end-of-life issues too a few weeks back. The conclusions that I reach are somewhat more conservative than those that the Japanese feminist bioethical consensus (such as it is) ended up incorporating--Morioka might or might not accept the appellation 'pro-life' in certain contexts, Tanaka certainly wouldn't, certain people who were heavily involved in what's called the 'conflict between women and disabled people' (guess what that was about!) absolutely would--but they're broadly comparable.

In general my main interest in this is a 'pure' philosophy-of-language interest in pushing back against the idea that 'rights' language is an appropriate way to discuss a woman's stake in abortion. The question then becomes: How to put the 'pure' philosophy into political practice? I do think there's a compelling state interest in keeping abortion rates low and indicating the moral unacceptability of the practice; I'm deeply concerned about the message that putting my own preferred policies into effect would send to women in impossible or even simply undesired situations; I have no idea yet how to resolve this but I'm working on it.

I'll point out that in addition to investigating the conservative Catholic ideas that you were so (largely rightly) excoriating towards in our conversation earlier and the Japanese Buddhist bioethical ideas that I'm discussing here I'm also being exposed to much more conventional pro-choice American liberal Protestantism through my academic work and the social and political atmosphere at my seminary so it's entirely possible that my views on the legal/social side of this (as opposed to the moral side, on which I've never considered abortion okay and doubt I ever will) will oscillate wildly over the next couple of years. Going into my degree program I was instructed to remain open to possible changes in my beliefs, so I've gotten vastly more erratic lately. Check back in another two months and I might have gone full Rosemary Radford Ruether. I might also only be interested in talking about phenomenology. I don't know.

[Kingpoleon]

Pretty sure people with alexithymia can still feel but just don't really understand what they're feeling.

But really, unless an organism has emotions and/or retrievable memories, they should not matter. At all.

If you can't understand it, then for that person it's just something that happens with none of the consequences of real emotions. It might as well not exist for them.

And bear, people without emotions don't matter? You don't really believe that, do you?

If I'm not mistaken (I might be), the emotions of people with alexithymia are still relevant (pain feels bad, pleasure feels good, etc.) but the emotions themselves cannot be fully comprehended. If there's a person somewhere who cannot feel any sort of emotion (even just raw ones like generic pleasure and pain) and also has no retrievable memories, then no, they do not matter. This includes first/second trimester fetuses, brain-dead people, etc.

"Members of the jury, your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the court, I charge that what my client did was not murder. As he merely shot someone in a coma, they did not feel anything. Death was instantaneous, and there were no emotions present at the time."

[afleitch]

I'm generally of the position that we need to change the culture around this first and foremost (why are there children who are constructed/positioned as being 'unwanted' (in this sense)? Surely someone wants them; surely someone wants any child!) rather than focusing on criminal law.

You have to be more deconstructive here. You are assuming that because you view these as unwanted 'children' that that is a view held by women who choose to have an abortion; they do not 'want the child'. But you must understand that for many women in the early stages of pregnancy, that pregnancy is a state in which they do not wish to be in. There is no 'child'; it is a state of a physical and psychological nature. They do not wish to be pregnant. It is not about a 'child.' There are a variety of reasons behind that, many of which are valid psychological reasons which if dismissed steps on that domain.

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You can't put pure philosophy into practice. That's the point. Philosophy is not a 'truism'. To pursue it like that, to absorb other people's thinking and try to position yourself accordingly so that you can act upon it divorces you from life. And separates you from other people's life experiences. It reinforces the self. Nothing more.

To give you an example from the other topic I mentioned this (which I've condensed);

The definition of impingement rests solely on the person experiencing that (the mother). The zygote/embryo cannot reciprocate. In effect the zygote/embryo isn’t ‘doing’ anything, but the mother is ‘feeling’ it (impinged)...

The only way to avoid the harm of pregnancy is to either use contraception in the first instance...to abort or to induce labour whether viable or unviable. That’s it. If it’s viable, it’s ‘born’; the state of pregnancy has ended. It is no longer an ethical battleground. Otherwise you accept that morally, you prohibit a woman from taking any action against any physical or psychological harm caused as a result of her pregnancy...

Your definition hasn't removed 'harm'; both physical and psychological as experienced by the woman as an issue. It is still there. It is still elicit. What is your response? What do you do about it? Or do you not consider it to be 'real'? Or do you take a utilitarian approach to that?

And again on the matter of reproductive coercion, you have accepted that forcing a woman to carry a child is abuse but by default holding the position woman she cannot abort (or even use contraception) to not carry a child, that she cannot do anything to ease the harm that she is experiencing. You're then offering no response to that. In both examples, because you have placed your opposition to abortion as primary then despite rallying against and taking a somewhat scathing view of utilitarianism that's exactly the principle you are applying here. You have not addressed the harm that a woman is facing. This is real. As much as an experience can be real, this is an real experience happening now to a woman. Philosophical opposition is moot because it pays absolutely no concern for this. Philosophy might trip someone up. It pays no concern to the fact they have fallen.

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You have to be very careful because you're changing more than beliefs, particularly when it comes to ethics because you're also changing your validation of other people and their experiences based on your application of ethics. Your perception of people on an ethical basis should never be erratic and most importantly should only ever change based on your interaction with people, not based on textual analysis. That's horribly scientific

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Jesus F-cking Christ people.

[/]

Pretty sure people with alexithymia can still feel but just don't really understand what they're feeling.

But really, unless an organism has emotions and/or retrievable memories, they should not matter. At all.

If you can't understand it, then for that person it's just something that happens with none of the consequences of real emotions. It might as well not exist for them.

And bear, people without emotions don't matter? You don't really believe that, do you?

If I'm not mistaken (I might be), the emotions of people with alexithymia are still relevant (pain feels bad, pleasure feels good, etc.) but the emotions themselves cannot be fully comprehended. If there's a person somewhere who cannot feel any sort of emotion (even just raw ones like generic pleasure and pain) and also has no retrievable memories, then no, they do not matter. This includes first/second trimester fetuses, brain-dead people, etc.

"Members of the jury, your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the court, I charge that what my client did was not murder. As he merely shot someone in a coma, they did not feel anything. Death was instantaneous, and there were no emotions present at the time."

retrievable memories

[DC Al Fine]

Women have abortions for a variety of reasons ranging from sympathetic to heinous. Abortionists on the other hand, generally have worse reasons for doing what they do on average. Therefore, we should treat abortion like prostitution is in some countries; recognizing it is morally wrong, but punishing abortionists much more severely than their clients.

In terms of punishment, we should be treating abortionists like we would any contract killer. In the womens' case, I am inclined to err on the side of mercy since it would be very difficult to suss out their specific reasons for getting an abortion. Some combination of probation, community service, and counselling would be more appropriate.

The woman generally shouldn't be punished, not because the act isn't wrong but because there are good sociological reasons not to. I don't know how the doctor should be punished but it should be a punishment that's existent and significant but not so steep as to ignore the fact that most people do, psychologically, process abortion and murder as at least different in degree (whether this difference in perception has any basis in reality is not really the point; difference in perception is relevant in a democratic society).

pretty much agree with this.   

The state has a role in stopping abortion as far as is possible without having some sort of pregnancy police. But the point should never be to be vindictive. I think if you want to stop abortion and not just drive abortion underground, you don't punish the woman, since women who regret their abortions may play a crucial role in the legal battle against abortion, and you want them to be able to receive help so they don't end up in the same situation and feel like they have to make the same choice again. 

It is taking a human life, and a tragic and undeniably violent thing, but context and biological and sociological reality matters in how you respond.  To insist that if you don't treat it exactly like murder in a criminal sense, you don't really believe in protecting this life, is I think to have disordered priorities. 

The law and public opinions are not a one way street. Laws on the books can and do affect public opinion. Crabcake has suggested that this is a good reason to ban spanking; not to actually have the cops take kids away from their parents in non-abusive situations, but it make spanking socially unacceptable. With that in mind, I think it more important to punish abortionists severely given the social context.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The law and public opinions are not a one way street. Laws on the books can and do affect public opinion. Crabcake has suggested that this is a good reason to ban spanking; not to actually have the cops take kids away from their parents in non-abusive situations, but it make spanking socially unacceptable. With that in mind, I think it more important to punish abortionists severely given the social context.

I agree that there is a use to having abortion being illegal, even if there is not an enforcement.  I just think that the enforcement question becomes very tricky, for instance how to deal with questions of medical necessity for the mother's life or health.  Or even, if a woman does have an abortion, there should be a way that she can get emergency medical help if there is a complication from the abortion.  So, not that a law against abortion shouldn't be enforced, but due to biological reality there is a set of problems here that does not exist in another form of homicide, which complicates the question of enforcement, and I'm not sure how this is resolved.

[YaBoyNY]

A better idea: Anybody who suggests punishing people for an activity which there is literally nothing wrong with will be rounded up and placed into a camp to have their dumbass 1st century mentality's done away with.

[Intell]

A better idea: Anybody who suggests punishing people for an activity which there is literally nothing wrong with will be rounded up and placed into a camp to have their dumbass 1st century mentality's done away with.

Uh Huh... I find abortion morally wrong but I get some liberal wanna-be hipster from New York won't understand.