Twinstuff Forums: Twinstuff Forums -> Penalty for Criminalized Abortion: Let's Discuss It On the National Stage

I read Anna Quindlen's column, and I thought "My God, this is IT! This is the discussion that we should be having!". Many people are numb to the well-worn "abortion debate" and don't see it as anything more than a niche issue. But it is so much more than that. Overturning RvW would set back women's rights over half a century but it would also enshrine in the national payche that it is OK to force maternity on women; that the needs and desperate situations of women do not matter; that state-sanctioned misogyny is A-OK. That a man may be promiscuous, may be brutal, may force her, abuse her and impregnate her against her will, and she will be forced by the state to bear the consequences.

Quindlen also made an important point about the whole "prosecute the doctor, not the woman" justification, which basically regards the woman as the hapless body upon whom yet another assault was made. It seems to assume that women are not capable of rational thought and are mere bodies with no self-control or self-determination. If women are haplessly, helplessly, stupidly, incompetently unable to prevent abortions from happening to themselves...and this becomes enshrined in law...then what's to stop the logical next step? It cannot be far to decide that women who are so mentally incompetent that they can haplessly participate in what the state may deem is a form of murder also may not be competent enough for other rights? Maybe not trustworthy enough to vote. Perhaps too incompetent to have bank accounts, too incompetent and too stupid to own property, etc etc.

Talk about the slippery slope.

I wanted to post all of that on the thread but I felt too revolted by the ugliness some people post./ Like I said, I knew when I started the thread that I'd see the truly vicious underside of self-proclaimed "christian" men and women, but I thought I could keep smiling, stay civil and let it roll off me, in the interest of getting that message of vile cruel callous disregard for the suffering of other women out to the other women reading...but I find I am so revolted that I can't continue!

Sentencing for criminalized abortion is the question that candidates must be made to answer. They avoid talking about penalties and consequences because, as Quindlen points out, it is a LOSER for them in the polls! The people are just coasting in ignorance thinking "pro-life" just means an innocently misguided and somewhat quaint approach to life; they think their rights are safe, yet they are coasting and not safeguarding them. The old abortion debate puts them to sleep and they think it is irrelevent. This is exactly what the anti-abortion candidates and their followers want; they hope to slip into power with most voters never quite "getting" what they really want to do, and then change laws and alter American women's lives horribly for the worse. After they've been voted in on economic or other promises, the real agenda of taking away a woman's right over her own body will go ahead to its final stage (the first stages being the steady erosion of abortion rights ever since RvW in 1973, so that abortion, like Plan b and even contraception, is already extremely difficult to get and impossible in some states) and it's too late to do anything about it. A new discussion that forces candidates to admit what penalties he would fight for in criminalizing abortion might, just might, make complacent voters sit up and take notice.

I hope so. I hope American voters start asking that question and don't stop asking it until every candidate has been forced to answer.