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

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Doctors- Whatever the sentencing laws are for first-degree murder, up to and including the death penalty

Women- No more than 5 years in prison for the first offense with mandatory counseling.  No minimum sentence for the first offense.  Harder punishments for subsequent abortions.

[This account no longer in use.]

Death penalty for both the doctor and the woman.

[Classic Conservative]

Doctors: Loss of medical license, up to 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine at a minimum. Highest possible punishment the death penalty by gas chamber.

Women: 2 years in prison minimum, $1 million dollar fine minimum. Highest possible punishment 60 years in prison and a $15 million fine

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

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).

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

Doctor: 2nd degree murder
Woman: Accomplice to murder

[Mike Thick]

Doctor: 2nd degree murder
Woman: Accomplice to murder

[Kingpoleon]

Highest possible punishment the death penalty by gas chamber.

One people, one nation, one leader! Hail pro-lifers!

[Cranberry]

Highest possible punishment the death penalty by gas chamber.

The fact that you would, anything about the debate on the death penalty completely set aside, call your, apparently preferred, method of capital punishment the "gas chamber" without even thinking about what this f-ing word means in a historical context is indeed very troubling, to put it in the nicest possible way.

[Classic Conservative]

Highest possible punishment the death penalty by gas chamber.

The fact that you would, anything about the debate on the death penalty completely set aside, call your, apparently preferred, method of capital punishment the "gas chamber" without even thinking about what this f-ing word means in a historical context is indeed very troubling, to put it in the nicest possible way.

Well it wasn't the best possible wording but I didn't mean a holocaustic gas chamber, I meant the gas chamber that is singular like the state of Washington has.

[afleitch]

Jesus F-cking Christ people.

[/]

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

Definitely something to consider.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

This thread is deeply concerning.

[DavidB.]

I haven't made up my mind on this issue. I consider abortion problematic after, say, 10 weeks, but there is a difference between murder and abortion of a fetus.

The woman generally shouldn't be punished, not because the act isn't wrong but because there are good sociological reasons not to.

What reasons do you have in mind?

[afleitch]

I do wonder why there is so much 'bloodlust' expressed in this topic. Do people generally go around thinking of imaginative and punitive ways to punish people on any matter that they happen to dislike? If that's the sort of person you are then I would be deeply worried.

Of course should this come to pass we would end up in the grotesque chaos of women who miscarry being hauled before the courts to make sure they didn't give themselves a 'little help'. And that would have to happen because people are already suspect of miscarriages and the circumstances around them as it is. The fetishisation of the unborn (thanks Marianism) by many pro-lifers get's close to a perversion.

[Goldwater]

Wait, you guys seriously think it's a good idea to punish the mother for abortion? WTF is wrong with you people?

[This account no longer in use.]

Wait, you guys seriously think it's a good idea to punish the mother for abortion? WTF is wrong with you people?

Better yet, people want to punish the doctor and/or mother with the death penalty, which makes no logical sense if being anti-abortion is to save lives.

[/]

Wait, you guys seriously think it's a good idea to punish the mother for abortion? WTF is wrong with you people?

Better yet, people want to punish the doctor and/or mother with the death penalty, which makes no logical sense if being anti-abortion is to save lives.

But if you kill them, there won't be any more abortions! Yay!

[RI]

This, though obviously I don't believe in the death penalty:

Doctor: 2nd degree murder
Woman: Accomplice to murder

[°Leprechaun]

"Pro-life" support Capital Punishment. Anybody see the irony?

If you want to be truly pro-life support pacifism.

[°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.

[SNJ1985]

Wait, you guys seriously think it's a good idea to punish the mother for abortion? WTF is wrong with you people?

Yes. She is complicit in the act, and therefore, she should receive some kind of punishment.

When a contract killing takes place, both the hitman and the person who hired the hitman get punished.

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

Looking at all the users proposing "DEATH PENALTY!!!11111" is honestly kind of making me feel liberal on the issue. Seriously, Classic Conservative and others, if being anti-abortion is about saving lives, then using the death penalty here totally defeats the purpose. Being pro-life has to be about more than just the 9 months in the womb. As I've said before, the Death Penalty is only merited for first degree murder (in which the right to life has truly been lost) (And even then, I would demand the holding of two separate guilt-determining jury trials (no matter what), just to ensure the verdict is correct.), which I don't consider Abortion to be, because 1) while a fetus (and even an embryo) is a human life, it's not the same "class" of human life as one that is out of the womb, 2) it defeats the purpose of being anti-abortion, and 3) the doctor, who is the actual murderer, does not have excess advance plans to murder the fetus.

Wait, you guys seriously think it's a good idea to punish the mother for abortion? WTF is wrong with you people?

Yes. She is complicit in the act, and therefore, she should receive some kind of punishment.

When a contract killing takes place, both the hitman and the person who hired the hitman get punished.

Exactly.

[Sopranos Republican]

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...)

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

I haven't made up my mind on this issue. I consider abortion problematic after, say, 10 weeks, but there is a difference between murder and abortion of a fetus.

The woman generally shouldn't be punished, not because the act isn't wrong but because there are good sociological reasons not to.

What reasons do you have in mind?

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.)

[DavidB.]

"Pro-life" support Capital Punishment. Anybody see the irony?

If you want to be truly pro-life support pacifism.

This reasoning is incredibly flawed and the result of thinking in cheap political talking points. People that are in favor of the death penalty do not support people getting randomly murdered without a process, you know.