In a post here back in May, I asked this question:
If a fetus is a person, and abortion is the unwarranted killing of that innocent person, why don't any of the pro-life candidates [for the Republican presidential nomination] favor a law under which the mother would be charged with murder?
A similar question was raised last week by Anna Quindlen in a column in Newsweek magazine.
Quindlen also provided a link (as I'm doing here) to a video of anti-abortion protestors in Libertyville, Ill., facing the question of what kind of punishment should be meted out to women who get abortions.
Let's face it. If all the pro-lifers started running around calling not only for a legal ban on abortion but also for stiff criminal sanctions against women who get abortions, the backlash against their movement would be huge.
By the same token (as I noted in that previous post this past May), the anti-abortion position is highly unpopular when it makes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. So, we're left to surmise that most pro-lifers want exceptions for cases of rape and incest. And we're left with the fact that a fetus produced by rape or incest is no less innocent than any other. The conclusion, then, is that most pro-lifers stand on very shaky moral ground.
