An Abortion Question

I'll let digby ask it:

I have a question for the innocent life crowd: how come none of the proposed laws anywhere, as far as I can tell, believe that a woman should be tried for the murder of her child if she gets an abortion? Indeed, there is no penalty in the South Dakota law for the woman at all. She isn't even charged as an accessory. Does that make sense? She could be tried for first degree murder for leaving a newborn baby to die on a church doorstep.

In another, later blog entry, he links to a video in which anti-abortion protestors are asked that same question. (Note: there must be a lot of traffic around that site - I haven't been able to see the video myself.) Digby reports that most of the protestors say they've never thought about it before.

After a bit, digby sums it all up:

So I think we need to have this discussion. Let's debate it out in the open and "air both sides" because from where I sit it's the "pro-lifers" who haven't thought this thing through. Nobody says they can't agitate against abortion and stand out there with their sickening pictures and try to dissuade women from doing it. I will defend their right to argue against abortion forever. But when they use the law to enforce their moral worldview they need to recognize that they can't have it both ways. If fetuses are human and have the same rights as the women in whom they live, then a woman who has an abortion must logically be subject to the full force of the law. It would be a premeditated act of murder no different than if she hired a hit man to kill her five year old. The law will eventually be able to make no logical moral distinction. Is everybody ready for that?

I wonder who'll be first to speak up and declare that a woman who gets an abortion should be tried for murder and a woman who plans on getting an abortion should be tried for conspiracy to commit murder. How about a woman who doesn't know she's pregnant and loses the baby due to something she did, shouldn't she be tried for negligent homicide?

And, finally, what about the woman who knows she's ovulating but chooses an evening alone with a good Candide Royale DVD instead? An evil pre-emptive contraceptive if ever there was one. With pornography to boot!