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Yes. Unironically, yes.
I think pro-lifers mean what they say as far as being opposed to abortion, but I almost never meet a pro-lifer who claims to believe abortion is literally murdering a baby who wants to literally charge a woman who has an abortion with the same crime that a woman who literally murders her baby would be charged with.
Yes, you are correct that it's a bear trap of a question. It is tactically sound for pro-lifers to avoid it. But it's a bear trap because of what it reveals. Either you don't literally believe abortion is the same as murdering a baby (you might believe it's very bad, you might believe it's kind of like murdering a baby, you might believe an innocent baby died, but you don't believe the woman having an abortion has the full moral culpability of a woman who intentionally murders her baby) or you have to explain why it shouldn't be treated the same criminally. I've only ever met a handful of pro-lifers who will bite that bullet and say "Yes, she's a murderer." Everyone else has answers that sound like either cognitive dissonance or disingenuousness.
Trump's answer "horrified both sides" because he was being too honest and saying the quiet part out loud. Yes, if it's illegal, it makes no sense to say "Oh, but we don't mean punish the mother - she's in such a difficult situation." Or else you are, at the very least, admitting that it is some lesser crime than murder.
The reason it's a bear trap is that there are very few people like OP above who is happy to come out and say they support abortion because it weeds out the underclass. Most of it is all bleeding-hearts about compassion and empathy and being nice morally superior people who love everyone unconditionally.
I'd bite that bullet. Once may be a terrible choice and an unexpected event. You're on your third abortion? If you haven't figured out How Babies Are Made by now, jail time. But of course, the howling about "no pity! no compassion! monster monster monster!" will drown out everything.
It is entirely possible to hold both views: that this is killing, and yet the mother too deserves compassion. But if you do that, then you're in the bear trap. Admit the mother should be treated kindly, it's "you don't believe it's murder". Say you believe it's murder, and "you want to force women to give birth just like broodstock".
If I can extend some amount of understanding and empathy to a murderer because of mental illness or terrible situation, then I can do that here as well. But you'll get no thanks for it. The pro-abortion side yammer on about "compromise", where "compromise" means "you give in to all our demands, we give you nothing in return". That's why I think the rape/incest/physical threat to the life of the mother exceptions are bad tactics, because it's treated as "well you've already given in on abortion for this reason, so you've lost the right to say it's killing because if you really thought it was killing you'd never give in on that; therefore you must give in on abortion for the other reasons we want it".
The trolley problem people suddenly get all "but you can't sacrifice the woman here!" when it's "sacrifice one to save many".
I can buy a position that is something like "Abortion is murder but we should consider mitigating circumstances when sentencing a woman for murdering her child," but I don't buy the position "Abortion is murder but we should only punish the doctor, not the woman having the abortion." Which is still the mainstream pro-life party line. I suspect some of them are just plain disingenuous (they actually do want to convict women for murder, they just know that's not something they can say right now), but others seem to have genuinely wrestled themselves into an ideological position where abortion is kinda sorta murder for rhetorical purposes but not really.
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How about this variant? "Oh, but we don't mean punish the mother - she's been fooled by a billion dollar industry and a corrupt culture into believing it’s not murder, it’s her right and freedom as a woman and also her only way out of poverty."
It’s a scenario which has one equivalent, which is conveniently its culture war inverse: "Oh, but we don't mean punish the soldier - he's been fooled by a trillion dollar industry and a corrupt culture into believing it’s not murder, it’s his patriotic honor and duty as a man and also his only way out of poverty."
I don't think the equivalence to soldiers is convincing. Even anti-war activists generally do not hold soldiers responsible for being sent to fight by their country - but they can be held responsible for specific war crimes.
"Women have been fooled by a billion-dollar industry into believing that murdering babies is okay" - okay, but once you cripple that industry and make it illegal, why wouldn't you prosecute them? How is this different from saying gang bangers saw no other way out of their environment and therefore shouldn't be prosecuted, we should only go after, say, the cartels?
Your answers are typical, and they all boil down to not holding women responsible in the same way you'd hold them responsible for strangling a baby in its crib.
Soldiers are not blamed for killing specific enemy soldiers.
Being held not responsible for "specific war crimes" would be like not being held responsible for abortions that are morally repugnant for additional reasons than normal.
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At that point, I’d consider it, because at that point, it’s legally considered murder with conspiracy to murder, and they’d know it without excuse. I’d gladly go after PP for RICO today and the abortion providers for conspiracy to murder right now, with impeachment for any legislator voting down a single-issue “born-alive” bill.
I’ve met two women who murdered their child in the womb far past the “kid has an active brain” stage, one a wife on reddit for economic reasons and one a single IRL for emotional reasons (her ex was revealed to be a jerk and she wasn’t ready for single motherhood). Neither considered the child a real person yet. Would I treat them like baby stranglers at worst or concentration camp guards at Nuremberg at best? The first, yes, the second, no. The cognitive dissonance would be too shattering for her and send her to suicide.
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If it were possible to end abortion by jailing the mothers, I would do that. If it were possible to end abortion by letting the mothers free, I would do that. And if it were possible to end abortion by jailing some mothers and letting others free, I would do that. The practice itself is abhorrent, and abolishing it is far more important than book-keeping of charges for individuals who've engaged in a practice our society has sanctioned.
More realistically, I endorse legalized infanticide, and point out that the actual model our society appears to have settled on is that whether its a baby or a fetus is a determination the mother herself gets to make, with the fetus/child as her sole property that she may demand protection for or disposal of on her personal whim. Shades of the ancient Greek family law, as I understand it. The world is full of many evils, and will remain so no matter what happens with regard to abortion.
You think abortion is abhorrent but you support legalized infanticide? I guess I see your point in abolishing artificial distinctions (even pro-choicers often have a problem with "It's only murder the moment the baby exits the birth canal") but I honestly can't tell whether answering "The world is full of evils" with "Therefore we should legalize evil" is meant to be ironic. At what age would you make it actually illegal to kill a child?
"Endorse" might be the wrong word. If people are going to do what they're definately going to do, infanticide would be a more honest, legible way of doing it, and would incur no additional moral debt.
As to age limits, the point is that whether it's a child or not is the Mother's decision. Again, I point to the ancient Greek custom, which is where we appear to have arrived: the coexistence of legal abortion till birth (and in some cases, infanticide laws no one seems interested in enforcing) with laws that add serious extra penalties to harm caused to the unborn by third-parties might be considered schizophrenic, but in fact it makes perfect sense if one presumes that the personhood of the child is in fact determined by the mother. I mean, every possible objection to this that I can see is what we already have, so why would I object to simply being honest about it? And if we're willing to kill them when they're completely innocent, why not be willing to kill them when they grow into assholes like the rest of us?
Bonus points for restoring exposure as the method of killing, so someone else can actually come and rescue the kid and raise them as their own, which tends to drag in the point that abortion is actually a whole lot more about closure than most pro-choice people are willing to admit.
The point of the world being full of evils is a reminder, to myself as much as anyone, that none of this actually solves anything long-term. Forcing people to not kill their babies will not actually make the people on either side of that interaction less evil. When talking about morals-driven policy, it's easy to lose sight of that fact.
I don't know that laws have ever had as their primary purpose moral improvement. Sure, lawmakers might talk about how banning evil things will improve society, but mostly we make things illegal to deter people from doing them. I remain unsure how serious you are being. Presumably if you believe abortion is evil, then banning abortion would reduce the number of abortions. It would not instantly convince all the pro-abortion people that abortion is evil, so in that sense sure, they won't become "less evil," but if abortion decreases over time (and usually, thought not always, illegal things also become less socially acceptable), isn't that a moral "win" for society, from a pro-life point of view?
One probably shouldn't rely on them to do so, but I think some people, especially Christian Conservatives on the one side and the more radical Progressives on the other, think that society as a whole can get more or less moral in appreciable ways and without practical limit. They think there's some sort of Utopia available if only the system is adjusted just so.
In the case of Abortion, from a Christian perspective the problem isn't that people commit abortions, it's that they want to. Stopping them doesn't stop the sin, only its immediate effects. Likewise, stopping people from committing particular sins in particular times and places doesn't make your own preferred sins any less sinful. Stopping the immediate effects might still be preferable from a practical perspective, and it might help forestall a slide into worse norms, but from a moral perspective people on both ends of the action are still sinners regardless.
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Ever?
Various historical theocracies would surely disagree with you. Kosher law. Sharia. Puritan colonies. More modern missions, sects, and cults.
There’s also the whole edifice of Chinese political science. I’m quite rusty and don’t remember what distinguishes Confucianism and Legalism. But there was a nice post recently about “rectification of names.” Look at some of the quotes:
This is in the context of defending state-sponsored music. Xunzi clearly believed in the power of state action to align people with morality. I don’t think that’s unusual for any era.
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