Another gop govt shutdown?!

[joeydb]

Originally Posted by GenuineRisk

So do you feel women should go to jail for having abortions? Because you know, outlawing something doesn't eliminate it. In fact, during the Victorian era, when abortion was pretty much illegal across the country, some estimates put the per capita rate of abortion at 8 times what it is today.

So, what do you propose the punishment for these mothers (because the majority of women who have elective abortions already have at least one child) be? How many years do you think they should be locked away from their already living children for, Joey? What do you think is an appropriate sentence? Because if you're going to say it should be illegal, you need to be willing to back that up with what you think an appropriate sentence is.

Of course, outlaw it and the sentence for many women will be death. In the years immediately prior to Roe, 17 percent of maternal mortality deaths were due to illegal abortions. And in the mid 20th century it was estimated that there were between 200,000 and 1 million illegal abortions a year. This is when it was illegal, Joey. You think that's going to change if it's made illegal again? Please. We had almost 100 years of it being illegal and the rate per year was anywhere from 200,000 to 2,000,000 a year, depending on the source. And that's with a lot smaller population than we have today.

And the stats today- a vacuum-aspiration abortion carries a risk of death prior to eight weeks' gestation of one in one million. An abortion after 20 weeks' gestation creeps up to a little less than 9 in one million.

And childbirth? 12.7 per 100,000 will die. In just my own experience, I know one 13 year old girl whose mother died in childbirth and a pair of 4 year old twins whose mother died birthing them.

The long and short of it is, if abortion is outlawed, it will continue, at likely the same numbers it happens now, but the big difference is thousands of women will die every year from it, as they did in the past. Wives will die. Mothers will die. Daughters will die. They will die.

If you support abortion being made illegal again, you are saying you think death is an appropriate punishment for getting an abortion, because that will be the real world effect, no matter what fairy tale you try to spin for yourself. So never mind, Joey. You already answered Danzig's question.

Which part of it "ending a human life" did you miss?

Every practice that is outlawed continues to some degree. There is drug abuse. There is underage drinking. There is insider trading. Yes, there are other varieties of murder. But obviously the incidence of these things goes down when they are outlawed and punishment after due process is applied.

Ever watch the investigative dramas about police work? There are many, many characters depicted that are in a bind, maybe they murder to end exploitation or blackmail, or they got carried away with an emotional reaction, or they were just stone cold evil. In every case, the sorting out of the case is left to the courts. The apprehension and charging of the suspect is uniformly carried out by the police, and then the case is adjudicated by the court.

That is all fiction of course, but it should say something about how we view the law and how we teach our kids (the ones not aborted), about right and wrong.

The idea that we would let a heinous practice continue to be legal just because people will continue to do it is not one that I would support.