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Abortion and Punishment

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Katha Pollitt is, as usual, making sense:

DONALD J. TRUMP gave his primary opponents a gift when he said this week that if abortion is outlawed, “there has to be some form of punishment” for the woman. He let them look as if they cared about women.

Gov. John Kasich of Ohio responded to Mr. Trump’s comments by saying, “Of course women shouldn’t be punished.” Like his fellow Republican presidential candidate Mr. Trump, Mr. Kasich opposes legal abortion except in cases of rape and incest and to save the woman’s life. Mr. Kasich has signed 17 anti-abortion measures into law since he took office in 2011. Half the clinics in Ohio in operation at the beginning of his tenure have closed or stopped performing abortions.

In a statement, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said, “Being pro-life is not simply about the unborn child, it’s also about the mother.” He would permit legal abortion only to save the woman’s life — no exception for rape and incest victims — and tried to shut down the government in his effort to defund Planned Parenthood. Virtually every anti-abortion group in the country quickly disavowed the notion of punishing women, many using words like compassion, love and healing. The movement’s hashtag is #lovethemboth.

Within hours, Mr. Trump retracted his “punishment” statement, saying that only the doctor or person who performed the abortion would be held legally responsible. That is the standard anti-abortion line, but face it, punishing the woman is logical.

If abortion is murder, as abortion opponents are always claiming it is, how can society let the woman off the hook? We take murder pretty seriously in this country, especially the murder of children, which is what the anti-abortion movement deems fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses to be. True, punishing women sounds cruel and misogynist. But if ending a pregnancy is murder, how can we not treat it as such?

Abortion opponents answer this question by insisting that the woman is a victim, too — “broken and wounded,” in the words of Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America. The woman is desperate, confused and alone. Someone pushed her into it — her parents, her boyfriend or husband, the “culture of death” that tells her an embryo is just a clump of cells, Planned Parenthood. Yes, somehow, the mere existence of a clinic forces her to enter its doors, even if she has to drive all day to get there, sleep in her car to fulfill a 24-, 48- or 72-hour waiting period, listen to a script full of anti-abortion propaganda and pay a month’s wages for the procedure.

If you consider how determined a woman has to be to get an abortion in much of the country these days and how much energy states expend trying to dissuade her, it’s hard to see her as a frail flower. If abortion is murder, the woman is less like a victim and more like someone who hires a hit man. In law, both parties are culpable.

Abortion opponents know full well that the public would not abide putting women in prison en masse.

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