Charles Cooke calls this an ideological Turing test, i.e. a question whose answer reveals how plausible it is that Trump really is who he claims to be. The standard answer from nearly all serious pro-lifers is that its the abortionist, not his patient, who should be sanctioned if and when abortion is banned. The March of Life explains why:
Mr. Trumps comment today is completely out of touch with the pro-life movement and even more with women who have chosen such a sad thing as abortion, said Jeanne Mancini, President of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund. Being pro-life means wanting what is best for the mother and the baby. Women who choose abortion often do so in desperation and then deeply regret such a decision. No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion. This is against the very nature of what we are about. We invite a woman who has gone down this route to consider paths to healing, not punishment.
Ted Cruz, when hes inevitably asked about this now, will give some variation of that same response. Trump, whom his conservative critics suspect of being an opportunist on abortion rather than committed to the cause, went a different route. You can almost see the wheels turning in his head here: He knows, as a political matter, that he cant let Cruz get to his right on abortion. Republicans will let him slide on a lot a lot but if he gives them reason to think hes BSing them on an issue at the very core of social conservatism, it could give Cruz the break he needs to take off. And so, when he gets the question from Matthews about what to do with women who insist on having abortions in a hypothetical future where the practice is banned, he goes with his gut and his gut is stay to the right. So sure, lets punish women for abortion. This is the message the partys carrying into the general election against the first woman major-party nominee, huh? By a guy whos already having major problems polling among women, no less.
Its easy to understand how an amateur would stumble into this answer, writes Matt Lewis, but why would you want to nominate an amateur?
In truth, like the notion that there should be exceptions for rape and incest, the notion that only the abortion doctor (not the woman having the abortion) should face penalties, is inconsistent with the notion that abortion is murder.
Yet these political compromises are necessary in order to cobble together a palatable and defensible (if admittedly inconsistent) public policy position that might someday actually be able to win the argument in mainstream America.
Part of the goal is to remove the ability for pro-choicers to demagogue the issue by scaring vulnerable women. Now, thanks to Trump, thats back on the table.
Trumps already trying to walk it back even though the townhall with Matthews from which this was clipped hasnt aired yet:
Hillarys already attacking him over it. So is Team Cruz, as youll see in the second clip below. Trump can run from it but its on tape and every down-ballot Republican will wear it now if hes the nominee. And the best part, as one Twitter pal said, is that Trump will eventually (eventually as in probably within the next few hours) deny that he ever said it to begin with. Still think this is all part of a master strategy or could it be that he really is winging it?
Don't pull out one piece and draw some twisted, incorrect conclusion.
That's whiny bullshit - what "twisted, incorrect conclusion" did I supposedly draw, and what missing "context" supposedly proves the conclusion incorrect?
If you prosecute women who try to have abortions (or have had abortions), you then open the door to prosecuting for murder all the women who had abortions when it was still legal.
Women were never punished for abortion. Only abortionists were ever prosecuted.
The proper answer for Trump, the only answer, is "women have never been prosecuted for abortion and they will not be, no matter what Congress or the Court does with Roe v. Wade".
This claim appears overly broad. In today's world, where the woman can take a pill to induce a miscarriage/abortion, women can and have been prosecuted and sent to prison.
It isn't justice for Purvi Patel to serve 20 years in prison for an abortion
When women are desperate to end their pregnancies, they will. The answer to this shouldnt be punitive, but supportive
Jessica Valenti April 2, 2015 The Guardian
Abortion is illegal in the United States. So is having a stillbirth not officially, perhaps, but thanks to a case in Indiana, were halfway there. On Monday, Purvi Patel, a 33 year old woman who says that she had a miscarriage, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for neglect of a dependent and feticide. She is the first woman in the United States to ever be sentenced for such a crime.
In July 2013, Patel went to the emergency room with heavy bleeding. She eventually admitted to miscarrying a stillborn fetus and placing it in a bag in a dumpster. (Patel lived with her religiously conservative parents who did not believe in premarital sex.) After police searched Patels cellphone, they found text messages that suggested she bought abortion-inducing drugs online.
Despite the fact that no traces of any abortifacent were found in Patels blood work taken at the hospital, the prosecution argued that she had taken the drugs mentioned in her text messages and caused her miscarriage at 23-24 weeks of pregnancy. And, in legal maneuvering that defies imagination, Patel was charged not just with fetal homicide, but with neglecting a child. As the Guardian reported last year, these charges are completely contradictory: neglecting a child means that you neglected a live child, and feticide means that the baby was born dead.
But logic has never been at the center of the draconian laws and arrest policies that target pregnant women: control is. As Lynn Paltrow, the executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, told me last year about laws aimed at drug-using pregnant women, this kind of prosecution is about making pregnant women from the time an egg is fertilized subject to state surveillance, control and extreme punishment.
And, as with other laws that hurt pregnant women, Indianas feticide law was not intended (explicitly, anyway) to be a policy that affected women: it was supposedly designed to target illegal abortion providers. But despite the anti-choice insistence that women are victims of abortion providers, the history of how similar laws are used show just how much its women and women of color in particular who are directly impacted by fetal protection policies.
After a feticide law was passed in Texas in 2003, for example, a local district attorney used the opportunity to send a letter to all doctors in her county that they were now legally required to report any pregnant women using drugs. Doctors complied, and and more than 50 women were reported and charged with crimes.
We may never know what really happened in Patels case. She has repeatedly said that she had a miscarriage which, if true, means that the state is sending a woman to jail for not having a healthy pregnancy outcome. But even if Patel did procure and take drugs to end her pregnancy, are we really prepared to send women to jail for decades if they have abortions? Even illegal ones?
When women are desperate to end their pregnancies, they will. The answer to this shouldnt be punitive, but supportive: women need better access to education, affordable contraception and abortion without harassment or delay.
Patels case opens the door for any woman who expresses doubt about her pregnancy to be charged if she miscarries or has a stillbirth. Its a terrifying thought, but one that is already impacting real women: the anti-choice movement is now sending women to jail for what happens during their pregnancies. So tell me again how abortion is totally legal. Or tell Purvi Patel.
what "twisted, incorrect conclusion" did I supposedly draw?
That you and I agree the only issue in contention for selecting the next justice is that individual's stance on abortion.
No, that's your functional illiteracy at work; I in no way implied "only issue" by quoting your text, "There is an open Supreme Court seat. The next President will nominate someone. That individual's stance on abortion is important."
And if you're suggesting I think "the only issue in contention for selecting the next justice is that individual's stance on abortion" - that's your functional illiteracy at work again.
"I in no way implied "only issue" by quoting your text, "There is an open Supreme Court seat. The next President will nominate someone. That individual's stance on abortion is important."
Sure you did. You omitted the other issues I posted.
"And if you're suggesting I think "the only issue in contention for selecting the next justice is that individual's stance on abortion"
That's what you said in post #175: "The(n) we agree with respect to the only issue in contention in post #150."
I in no way implied "only issue" by quoting your text, "There is an open Supreme Court seat. The next President will nominate someone. That individual's stance on abortion is important."
Sure you did. You omitted the other issues I posted.
By retaining your "That individual's stance on abortion is important" I explicitly showed that you did not see it as the "only issue".
Post #150 was about abortion only.
It was about whether abortion is "a burning issue in 2016" - "burning" is not "only".
If you prosecute women who try to have abortions (or have had abortions), you then open the door to prosecuting for murder all the women who had abortions when it was still legal.
I thought it through quite well. You fail to understand the question which is what crime would the new law specify is committed when an illegal abortion is had. Even if it's homicide there are some that are considered justifiable. There are also questions of Due Process.
But before even that the new law must specific the nature of the unborn fetus. Is it a person or not? If not the nature of the crime would likely be civil or if criminal a misdemeanor and all previous violations grandfathered out of consequence. If so then there still are options with respect to the crime being a homicide. But if a homicide there would likely be spelled out what circumstances would be considered justifiable. This would require a finding of facts that would no longer be possible to litigate for the 50 +/- million prior abortions thus render your objection mute.
Think more on this and you will find that I am correct that it all depends on the nature of the victim and of the circumstances of the crime and that pre-law violations present no issue.
#244. To: nolu chan, TooConservative, misterwhite (#237)
the anti-choice movement is now sending women to jail for what happens during their pregnancies.
First it's the Pro-Life movement that you Pro-Death supporters oppose.
Second, I guess it's OK with you Pro-Deathers for a women to knowingly abuse the fetus and bring it term, oh say like a crack addict.
This is an incredibly complex issue, especially if science someday conclusively proves that an unborn fetus is a human being and the courts are compelled by honesty and integrity to recognize that an unborn fetus is a person subject to the protections of the Constitution.
What we have now is a hodge-podge of different determinations varying from state to state. It's not only stupid but immoral. For example, what makes an unborn fetus killed in a car accident or commission of a crime against the mother (to you Pro-Deathers she technically is not a mother yet) have due consideration and/or standing in a court in some states and in not others?
Geez, fair and balance you are not. I am not even sure that you are capable of rational thinking on this subject.
If you prosecute women who try to have abortions (or have had abortions), you then open the door to prosecuting for murder all the women who had abortions when it was still legal.
Good. Murderers should be punished. You pro abortion people are stupid would be murderers.
The proper answer is that the feds would close it down entirely and go after Stone. Which is actually more likely to happen in the real world than you realize.
In the same way, when outlawing abortion, you'd go after the abortionists and their clinics (also the ob/gyn's who quietly perform abortions in their regular medical offices for their own clients which is not uncommon). We never went after women before Roe either, only the abortionist.
There is well over a century of history of this policy. Try reading a little so you won't be as ignorant as your man-crush.
The proper answer is that the feds would close it down entirely and go after Stone. Which is actually more likely to happen in the real world than you realize.
In the same way, when outlawing abortion, you'd go after the abortionists and their clinics (also the ob/gyn's who quietly perform abortions in their regular medical offices for their own clients which is not uncommon). We never went after women before Roe either, only the abortionist.
There is well over a century of history of this policy. Try reading a little so you won't be as ignorant as your man-crush.
if science someday conclusively proves that an unborn fetus is a human being
That has been known since the beginning.
If that were the case SCOTUS could never have decided RvW as it did. The science is absolutely unsettled on the question as when life beings. And it's likely that it never will have a definitive answer.
It may be true that the scientific consensus is that life does begin at conception (but that there is such consensus is itself contested) there is no such scientific consensus on when personhood begins. The latter is a legal matter.
"The problem has never been "we can't kill it because it is alive". It's "we can't kill it because it is a human being.""
The more intractable problem is that the U.S. Constitution never refers to human beings. It clearly refers to citizens and to persons. And while it clearly defines citizen it has no definition of person. Logic says that a person is a human being and vice versa. But SCOTUS said that a fetus is not a person. In doing so did SCOTUS state that a human being is not person? Did SCOTUS ignore science?
It is undeniable that no-one knows for sure what the Founding Fathers thought about the fetus, personhood, abortion as may be expressed in the Constitution. If anything they probably never considered the question of what constitute a person as is referred to in the Constitution. It is clear that the Constitution say that to be a citizen one must be born. It says nothing about what constitutes a person.
"The early philosophers also argued that a foetus did not become formed and begin to live until at least 40 days after conception for a male, and around 80 days for a female.
Through much of Western history abortion was not criminal if it was carried out before 'quickening'; that is before the foetus moved in the womb at between 18 and 20 weeks into the pregnancy. Until that time people tended to regard the foetus as part of the mother and so its destruction posed no greater ethical problem than other forms of surgery.
England
English Common Law agreed that abortion was a crime after 'quickening' - but the seriousness of that crime was different at different times in history.
In 1803 {N.B. - long after the U.S. Constitution was adopted} English Statute Law made abortion after quickening a crime that earned the death penalty, but a less serious crime before that.
America
Abortion was common in most of colonial America, but it was kept secret because of strict laws against unmarried sexual activity.
Laws specifically against abortion became widespread in America in the second half of the 1800 s {N.B. - long after the U.S. Constitution was adopted}, and by 1900 abortion was illegal everywhere in the USA, except in order to save the life of the mother."
It should be abundantly clear that in the 17 and 18 hundreds there was never any consideration of the status of fetus that was being destroyed. Did most, or even any, of these people believe that life began at conception and therefore the unborn fetus was subject to the same legal protections and benefits of those that were born? It clearly seems not to be the case.
Science clearly has not definitively settled the question when RvW was decided. In fact the majority opinion supported the contention that a fetus was not a person, at least for the purpose of the 14th Amendment.
You need to take you emotional and religious beliefs out of the facts of what the scientific community does and does not support on this subject. Neither of us may like it but we cannot ignore it.
"This is an incredibly complex issue, especially if science someday conclusively proves that an unborn fetus is a human being and the courts are compelled by honesty and integrity to recognize that an unborn fetus is a person subject to the protections of the Constitution."
How can any scientist say that a fetus is a person at 270 days, but not at 269 days? Or 268 days? And so forth.
I think society and/or the courts will make that determination.
If the poster meant to refer to more than one issue he wouldn't have singled out just one.
The poster referred to WHETHER that one issue WAS A "BURNING" ONE FOR 2016, as you had denied. If anyone "singled out" the issue it was YOU in your post (#147) to which he replied.
By retaining your "That individual's stance on abortion is important" I explicitly showed that you did not see it as the "only issue".
So by mentioning only one issue, you "explicitly showed" more than one.
The existence of more than one issue is a given
Then it would be "implicit".
Even if you were right*, it remains the case that by retaining your "That individual's stance on abortion is important" I showed that you did not see it as the "only issue" - so I clearly did not, as you claimed, draw the conclusion "That you and I agree the only issue in contention for selecting the next justice is that individual's stance on abortion."
(*Which you aren't; the existence of other issues is implicit, which means that when you say "abortion is important" you have explicitly said you don't see it as the "only issue in contention". One doesn't need to state every relevant premise in order to have been explicit.)
Arguments not infrequently rely on the law of the excluded middle, but rarely state this rule; if you'd like to maintain that all such arguments are not explicit, feel free - more fool you.