Quindlen: How Much Jail Time for Women Who Have Abortions? ⇒
30 July 2007, mid-afternoon
"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."
This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.
I think all along it has been argued to have the penalty applied to the medical personnel, rather than the patient. If that’s the case, there probably won’t be much contradiction.
by tiff on July 30 2007, 11:05 pm #
Why should the penalty be applied solely to the doctor, when it is the mother who wants the abortion? If I hire someone to have you killed, I’m just as culpable for a crime as the person who actually does the killing. Most of the time the argument is that you are killing a baby when you perform an abortion, and that it is no different than murder. Clearly it is different.
Here is the YouTube video in Question.
A long and rambling thread on MetaFilter about this video.
by Ramanan on July 31 2007, 9:24 am #
Not saying it should or should not be applied to the medical personnel. but I suppose the logic in holding the medical professional accountable is that they are the but for cause of the death of the fetus.
On that note — if a couple decides to have an illegal abortion — why should a woman be penalized and not the biological father? What about wilful negligence by either/ both parents that creates a de facto abortion? (e.g. punching the woman in the stomach…or whatever action short of sticking a coat hanger up…)
Of course you can create penalty for both the medical personnel and the patient who seeks this. If I were an opponent of abortion, I would seek penalties for a) person who administers it knowing the full implication of the act (e.g. not forced to perform the abortion) b) the woman and/or the biological father who seek the act to be done knowing the full implication. To catch the biological father will be much harder b/c it’s hard to prove his intent without having him commit the act of seeking abortion (unless he accompanies her or something…)
You can see that attaching the penalty to the medical professional makes sense IF this question is to be answered. It’s the simplest solution for lawmakers and seems to send some sort of clear message: that is that a medical professional who wilfully perform abortion will bear the full consequences of the entire procedure. That alone is hoped to fully stop abortion (of course that just makes ways for more coathangers procedures…)
anyway, there are tons of crimes for which people who are equally or more culpable are not punished — and it’s perfectly constitutional. This is the kind of discretion legislators have when drafting laws.
by tiff on July 31 2007, 9:47 pm #
tons of crimes? such as? I don’t disagree with your legislator/discretion angle, but I’m just wondering kind of comparable crimes you’re talking about?
by haran on July 31 2007, 10:22 pm #
i guess it’s not a crime unless the law makes it one. What i meant was that there are many acts which are deemed immoral that goes uncriminalized, while other acts that seem less immoral gets criminalized. In the case of abortion, if lawmakers decide to criminalize the act of performaning the abortion and only penalize the medical personnel, but chooses to ignroe the act of soliciting abortion (by the woman) this is perfectly fine so long as the result is the intent for whatever reasons.
one exmaple comes to mind is assisted suicide. Note it’s not a crime to commit suicide but it is a crime to assist someone in killing themselves. Arguably this has created much controversy surrounding the degree of culpability of each act. Someone who merely assisted a person with the determination to die cannot be said to be more culpable (if at all culpable), yet is deemed to be a criminal while the suicidal remains innocent. Medical personnels who passively allow the patient to die are also not criminals, although they cannot be said to be anymore culpable than someone who assisted a positive act of suicide. This is precisely the kind of discretion that lawmakers have in making these fine distinctions among commissions and ommissions. I can see a parallel IF some lawmaker decides to criminalize abortion, but decides to differentiate the penalty for various actors of the act. See Rodriguez.
another example, perhaps not as comparable in the degree of morality, is the alcohol v. marijuana. In Malmo-levine, it was unsuccessfully argued that the government cannot justify not controlling alcohol and tobacco when those uses pose more harm and control marijuana. SCC says that Court only needs to set the outer constitutional limits to legislative actions while parliament can prioritize what to criminalize. Similarly in RJR MacDonald, it is perfectly fine for parliament to ban tobacco ads while allow tobacco smoking, even though an advertiser can’t really be said to be more culpable than the person who freely chose to smoke and produce second hand smoke etc…
Prostitution itself is also not criminalized per se, so you can’t get arrested just for being a hooker. But every act around the practice, such as solicitation, pimping, running a brothel, is illegal.
that said, these are just my opinions and how I would interpret the issues.
by tiff on August 1 2007, 10:27 pm #