Some pro-life advocates evade the question, “How should a woman who commits abortion be punished if abortion were made illegal?” because the pro-life purpose or position is not to judge or punish women in crisis situations — but rather to “preserve the life of the child, to extend compassion, and to provide any emotional, spiritual, and physical support needed.” 

Answering this question objectively does not pose any moral dilemmas or contradictions to abortion abolitionists because how one decides to punish the one who commits the act of abortion in no way lessens what abortion is—the taking of innocent human life.  No matter what reasoning one employs to justify the act or what method one chooses to accomplish the act, the result of an induced abortion is always a dead baby and a trail of brokenness.   

Abortionists ask:  If abortion is murder, then should a woman who commits abortion be punished as a murder?  They also argue that if an abortion abolitionist does not agree that a woman should be punished as a murderer, then his or her argument about abortion is inconsistent.

Abortionists have it wrong.  Abortion advocates should not allow themselves to be pushed into a corner by conceding that every act of abortion be punished the same.  For every other crime circumstances are considered.  Even if the penalty for abortion were to be something less than the punishment for a standard homicide, it does not mean that abortion is a less heinous crime, or that fetuses are less valuable humans.  Some states have more severe penalties for killing police officers, but this does not mean killing average citizens is less heinous or average citizens are less valuable.

Abortion advocates must agree that abortion at every stage of pregnancy should be made a criminal offense, with exceptions to preserve the life of the mother.  In only this instance, abortion is saving one life instead of losing two.  This is the standard historical position and it is consistent with the pro-life position that life begins at conception and the taking of that life during any stage of pregnancy is wrong.

To answer the question of how abortion should be punished, I will refer to the history of abortion in this nation.  Abortion has not always been legal.  There was a span of time in this nation when abortion was illegal.  Historically, women were not imprisoned for having abortions—not so much because abortion was not thought to be heinous, but because states found that it was “almost impossible to produce the evidence necessary to convict.  Pregnancy was hard to confirm; there was almost never a corpse or witness, and there was always a great deal of jury sympathy for desperate and abandoned women.”  Therefore, most states chose to place the bulk of criminal liability on abortion doctors in an effort to dissuade the practice.

Therefore, abortion doctors, the ones actually committing the ACT of murder, were pursued and punished for the crime of abortion.  Society has usually seen the woman as the lesser—or that there were two victims of abortion—the mother and child.

Unless she was a repeat offender, the courts and jury of peers often extended the woman mercy and compassion because most often the decision to abort was based on lies and misinformation being told to her by the abortionist/physician, or she made the decision under extreme pressure or duress (pressure from the father of the child or family members).

In every other instance of murder, whoever commits the act of murder bears the punishment specified under law.  In the case of abortion if the law properly labeled that murder — the individual to be punished would be the physician/abortionist.

Dellapenna notes that a legal focus on the abortionist rather than the woman is necessary in these cases because the law does not allow the conviction of someone on the basis of uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice.

“Courts even in the nineteenth and twentieth century justified continuing to treat a woman as a victim rather than a participant in the crime on the basis that one cannot consent to a crime against oneself,” he wrote in an email message. “This is akin to allowing a drug user to go free in order to convict a drug dealer.”

Dellapana said it is likely a better policy for abortion opponents to reject criminal punishments for women who undergo abortion. “This was the position, by the way, of Susan B. Anthony, Tennessee Claflin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Victoria Woodhull, and nearly all the other nineteenth century feminists,” he said.

Some possible ways of implementing punishment if abortion were made illegal would be of course to give the more severe punishment to the abortionist or the one profiting off the abortion practice.  He or she would have a much greater understanding of what abortion actually is, and what it does to a developing fetus.

The lesser punishment should be given to the woman guilty of inducing abortion “with increasing severity for repeated offenses.”  Nonetheless, history shows that it has been difficult to generate material evidence sufficient to convict women of the crime; therefore, “It may be appropriate to offer the woman impunity or a lesser charge in exchange for testimony against the abortionist.”

(pdf version)

http://www.abolishhumanabortion.com

The Claremont Institute

A myth about conservatism is circulating in academia and journalism and has spread to the 2004 presidential campaign. It goes something like this: the Republican Party assembled a national majority by winning over Southern white voters; Southern white voters are racist; therefore, the GOP is racist. Sometimes the conclusion is softened, and Republicans are convicted merely of base opportunism: the GOP is the party that became willing to pander to racists. Either way, today’s Republican Party—and by extension the conservative movement at its heart—supposedly has revealed something terrible about itself.

This myth is not the only viewpoint in scholarly debates on the subject. But it is testimony to its growing influence that it is taken aboard by writers like Dan Carter, a prize-winning biographer of George Wallace, and to a lesser extent by the respected students of the South, Earl and Merle Black. It is so pervasive in mass media reporting on racial issues that an NBC news anchor can casually speak of “a new era for the Republican Party, one in which racial intolerance really won’t be tolerated.” It has become a staple of Democratic politicians like Howard Dean, who accuses Republicans of “dividing Americans against each other, stirring up racial prejudices and bringing out the worst in people” through the use of so-called racist “codewords.” All this matters because people use such putative connections to form judgments, and “racist” is as toxic a reputation as one can have in U.S. politics. Certainly the 2000 Bush campaign went to a lot of trouble to combat the GOP’s reputation as racially exclusionary. I even know young Republicans who fear that behind their party’s victories lies a dirty, not-so-little Southern secret. Read the rest of this page »

by Providence Crowder

The congregation of believers under God’s old covenant was commanded to observed mosaic laws and customs; however, under his new covenant, believers in Christ, Christians, were not under the law, but grace (Rom. 6:14).  Nonetheless, exegetical discussions arose early on surrounding what biblical customs and rites Christians were obligated to observe, and if there were any such observances.  As a result, the Christian community developed some of its most essential features, many of which mirrored Judaism: “synagogue-like worship, eldership, preaching, service to the needy, baptism, and Eucharist,”[1] all of which were grounded in the teachings and the words of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Still, internal theological struggles arose within Church.  Those labors began with resolving the Christological debate.  Much later, ecclesiological concerns fueled the rise of Protestantism during the Protestant Reformation and Great Awakening periods and forced Christians to confront questions such as: Who is the Church?  How is one admitted into the Church?  What authority does the Church have?  How should the Church be governed?  Orthodox Christians during these periods were compelled to defend and reevaluate the orders and ministry of the church.  Competing ecclesiological viewpoints arose among Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, the Magisterial Reformers, and the Radical Reformers as each group sought to determine the marks of the true Christian Church. Read the rest of this page »

by Evette Harris

If you’re like me, you’ve grown over the years. We still have areas where we need to grow, but, for the most part, we have pretty good common sense.
But, if you’re like me, you are still dumbfounded by some things that would seem to have common sense solutions, but, so far, those solutions escape our realm.
Let me list a few:
1. How is it that most responsible adults have to balance their checkbooks, at least monthly, but, the people we elect don’t even have to create a budget? (Actually, they are supposed to but they just haven’t in quite some time);

2. If you or I did not, could not, would not, do the job we were hired for at 200K+ per annum, plus benefits, we would be fired or at the very least, placed on probation for a time, during which we would be expected to greatly improve; but, the people we elect and send to office at the local, state, and national levels are overwhelmingly re-elected time and time again; Read the rest of this page »