How Much Jail Time For An Abortion?

Buried among prairie dogs and amateur animation shorts on YouTube is a curious little mini-documentary shot in front of an abortion clinic in Libertyville, Ill. The man behind the camera is asking demonstrators who want abortion criminalized what the penalty should be for a woman who has one nonetheless. You have rarely seen people look more gobsmacked. It's as though the guy has asked them to solve quadratic equations. Here are a range of responses: "I've never really thought about it." "I don't have an answer for that." "I don't know." "Just pray for them...."

...The great thing about video is that you can see the mental wheels turning as these people realize that they somehow have overlooked something central while they were slinging certainties. Nearly 20 years ago, in a presidential debate, George Bush the elder was asked this very question, whether in making abortion illegal he would punish the woman who had one. "I haven't sorted out the penalties," he said lamely. Neither, it turns out, has anyone else. But there are only two logical 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, you have to accept the second. You can't have it both ways.

For those of you who believe abortion should be criminalized, what do you the approrpriate sentence should be?
How Much Jail Time?

---

I adore abortion. I believe in it so much I want to have one out of solidarity.

---

The same question works for gay rights. Even the most rabidly anti-gay protester -- short of Fred Phelps -- will generally hem and haw around it when you ask whether sodomy should carry the death penalty. But that's exactly what's prescribed in that Leviticus passage they're quoting.

I always argue that abortion should be free, safe and on demand until the 16th year. Forget trimesters.

---

Thank you Kringas

---

If an abortion is performed early enough, what is removed can hardly be called a fetus. That's what I think.

---

Kringas, thanks? I'm not sure!

Anyway, I honestly don't see anything to be ashamed or secretive about. Big deal.

---

Oh, ok, good Kringas!

I'd be glad to delete my post if it is something scandalous and bound to cause trouble here. Makes no difference to me.

---

This whole supposedly "getting jail time for an abortion" disgust me.

To me, this issue has no good solution. In my heart, I feel abortion is wrong. However, I can't reconcile my feeling with any viable solution. I don't pretend to know what's best for anyone else, so I don't think I have the right to tell someone else what she should do. But I do believe that life begins at conception, and I know that there are many families out there who would love to adopt, so I wish there was less of a stigma on a woman who gives up her baby for adoption.

I do believe that everyone has the right to make their own decisions about their body, but I also believe we need to live with the consequences of our actions. In other words, if you choose to have intercourse, you are taking risks, among those risks being pregnancy. You can mitigate those risks with condoms and other forms of birth control, but there is always some risk there.

Having said all that, I don't think a victim of rape or incest should be forced to complete a pregnancy, since she had no part in the decision. However, I acknowledge that that is contradictory to my belief that life begins at inception, because even that life conceived by rape is an innocent.

I guess I'm waiting for someone smarter than me to come along with a solution.

---

Updated On: 8/8/07 at 10:58 PM

I think you mean conception, madbrian.

---

Has anyone ever seen Keely and Du? A woman about to have an abortion is kidnapped and forced to carry it to term. In the climax of the play she - BEGIN SPOILER ALERT - she gives her self a literal coat hanger abortion - END SPOILER ALERT. I found the play very heavy handed when I saw it, but this thread keeps making me think about it.

Perhaps someone who knows better than I could explain to the climate in this country when abortion was outlawed or mostly outlawed. I was born after abortion was legalized (whew!). Were the women ever punished?

---

Heh. Box.

---