"You know, I never really even thought about that."
Anna Quindlen at Newsweek helps move the debate:
A new public-policy group called the National Institute for Reproductive
Health wants to take this contradiction and make it the centerpiece of a
national conversation, along with a slogan that stops people in their
tracks:
how much time should she do? If the Supreme Court decides abortion
is not
protected by a constitutional guarantee of privacy, the issue will
revert to the
states. If it goes to the states, some, perhaps many, will ban
abortion. If
abortion is made a crime, then surely the woman who has one is
a criminal. But,
boy, do the doctrinaire suddenly turn squirrelly at the
prospect of throwing
women in jail.
[...]
You have rarely seen people
look more gobsmacked. It's as though the guy
has asked them to solve
quadratic equations.
[...]
The great thing about video is that you can see
the mental wheels turning
as these people realize that they somehow have
overlooked something central
while they were slinging certainties. Nearly 20
years ago, in a presidential
debate, George Bush the elder was asked this
very question, whether in making
abortion illegal he would punish the woman
who had one. "I haven't sorted out
the penalties," he said lamely. Neither,
it turns out, has anyone else. But
there are only two logical choices: hold
women accountable for a criminal act by
sending them to prison, or refuse to
criminalize the act in the first place. If
you can't countenance the first,
you have to accept the second. You can't have
it both ways.
If you don't want an abortion, don't get one.
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