Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Can abortion laws prosecute only the abortion provider?

According to this article, they can do this only by making outrageously sexist assumptions.

If abortion is murder, does it make sense to let one of the murderers get off scot-free while punishing the other?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo

Joe said...

Yes thats odd. There is no real reason a law couldn't penalize the mother.

Jim Jordan said...

HELLOOO!
The mother is penalizing herself. What is the point here? We figure out the truth that abortion is murder and then we trip up the anti-abortionists by their saying the mother shouldn't be punished. What the Hell does that prove, other than that the pro-lifers are too damn kind?

Victor Reppert said...

No one is trying to trip up an anti-abortionist, except to say that even pro-lifers seem to back away from attributing the kind of heinousness to abortion that is attached to murder, at least when they are trying to penalize it.

The other caveat is that it is a mistake to write laws that imply that somehow women are not responsible for their actions. I think many women would rather be penalized than patronized.

Joe said...

I don't think pro-lifers think all abortions are murder. I think abortion is killing a human being but it is not necessarily murder. If a woman really doesn't think she is killing a human being when she receives an abortion then she is not committing murder. If on the other hand she does recognize this but has the abortion anyway - she is committing murder.

IlĂ­on said...

Of course it doesn't make moral sense to sanction one party to the murder and not the other.

But who decreed that human law must make any sense at all, much less moral sense?

Victor Reppert said...

The trouble here is that what the great promise of the pro-life position is moral consistency. There's no need to draw any arbitrary line after which the fetus picks up a right to life (viability, birth, brain development, what have you). So losing moral consistency is losing what seems to me to be strongest about the pro-life position.

Jim S. said...

In order for something to qualify as murder, it must be the intentional killing of another human being. Women who have abortions may believe that they are intentionally killing something, but I very much doubt that they believe what they are killing is a human being. To intentionally take the life of one's own child is a sign of severe mental instability, and the vast majority of women who have abortions are not insane. So since they are not intentionally killing another human being, it should not be considered murder. In fact, this may very well hold of abortion doctors as well.