Credit Where Credit is Due

Last week, Bob admitted that if abortion was made illegal, he would endorse punishment of women who had an abortion, including imprisonment.

Wow.

I know Bob's position may sound crazy to the vast majority of people who are thoughtful and compassionate.

However, if you truly believe that "abortion is murder," then Bob's position is the only logical outcome if you want to stay consistent with our system of justice. Under the legal principle of accomplice liability, an accomplice to a crime is equally as responsible as the principal who actually commits the crime.

For example, if I were to hire a hit man to kill my wife, and the crime is successful, then both me and the hit man would be guilty of premeditated murder.

This example can be easy analogized to a physician (or other person) providing an abortion and the woman who desires the abortion. The woman is hiring the physician to perform the abortion. If abortion is murder, then the woman is a murderer. Therefore, Bob logically asserts that a woman who gets an abortion should go to jail.

One doesn't have to think too hard to realize this line of thinking has chilling consequences. In many states, the punishment for premeditated murder is death. In Michigan, the punishment is life in prison without the possibility of parole. Let's take a few examples to illustrate.

(1) A married woman gets pregnant. She and her husband are ecstatic. However, things don't go according to plan. After the ultrasound, the doctor tells the happy couple that their child has Potter Syndrome and will be either stillborn or will die shortly after birth. After much contemplation and prayer, the couple decide to get an abortion rather than endure several more heartbreaking (and pointless) months of pregnancy. In Bob's ideal world, the husband, wife, and doctor would all go to jail for the rest of their lives for aborting a child that was going to die anyway.

(2) A young girl at college in Texas has been dating a nice young man. After a while, their relationship gets more serious and the couple eventually have sex. They were typical impatient youths and they decided to risk it without birth control because he forgot. She becomes pregnant. All of a sudden, the nice young man is nowhere to be found. The girl is scared since her dad is a prominent Christian radio talk show host with a fiery temper. The fallout of her being with child out of wedlock would be devastating to her and her family. She hears of a local family practice physician who performs abortions illegally and engages her services. The physician is mother to three children. A nosy dorm mate blabs the girl's story to her dad, the local police chief. In Bob's ideal world, the doctor and the girl are executed, leaving the children of the doctor without a mom.

(3) A married woman uses birth control pills to prevent pregnancy as she wants to get her career as a biochemist started before having kids. One month, the pills didn't prevent ovulation, but rather prevented implantation of the egg in the uterus. In Bob's ideal world, the woman should be jailed forever because the 100 cell blastocyst was discharged in her monthly period.

This is the future if Bob and his ilk get their way. Completely unreasonable punishments for all abortions, no matter what the circumstances, and I didn't even get into rape or incest. I wouldn't be surprised if Bob's reaction to the death of women at the hands of back alley abortionists was simply that "justice was served."