What’s Wrong with the World

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

About

What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Fred Thompson Comes out of the Closet

As a pro-choicer, that is.

Well, sort of. He still calls himself "pro-life." I don't know how that makes him compare to Rudy Giuliani. Does that make Giuliani more honest, or what?

Some of us have had real questions about Thompson on this score already because of the statements he made in 1994. (Please note that the guy whose blog this is was evidently the founder of the libertarian organization that gave Thompson the interview in 1994 in which he said that "government should stay out of" the abortion decision.)

But anyway, the 1994 remarks are more or less moot now, given this recent interview with Tim Russert. Thompson is unequivocal there that abortion should not be illegal, though he still says definitely that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.

He casts the question of legality in typically pro-choice terms: throwing "very young girls, their parents, and their family doctors" in prison. Has the man never heard of Planned Parenthood? Doesn't he know that abortion clinics exist? Does he really believe that pro-lifers want to throw thirteen-year-old girls into prison for obtaining abortions?

And I wouldn't care if a doctor as homey and paternal-looking as C. Everett Koop performed an abortion. An abortionist is an abortionist, whether he is a "family doctor" or not. This is all typical pro-choice claptrap. It is hard to believe that Thompson either believes it himself or thinks he can get away with spouting it and also being considered pro-life. But if Rudy is wooing social conservative voters without calling for the overturn of Roe, merely by mouthing a mantra about judicial appointments, why shouldn't Thompson try to get one up on him, grabbing the "pro-life" label by advocating overturning Roe, while advocating legal abortion?

Sadly enough, we've come far enough down in our political process that that is, pragmatically speaking, a good question.

Comments (28)

Does he really believe that pro-lifers want to throw thirteen-year-old girls into prison for obtaining abortions?

What should the punishment be? If abortion is murder, how could you rule out jail time?

Pro-lifers have stated again and again that it is the abortionists they believe should be punished legally. Legal sanctions against the woman, even in the case of an adult woman, are sufficiently fraught with difficulties, both political and moral (moral, given the frequent presence of extenuating circumstances and varying degrees of pressure and coercion), that no mainstream pro-life group advocates them. As far as I know, not even the American Life League does so, though ALL is a group that decries compromise in other groups. In the case of a minor girl, of course, the whole thing is the more ridiculous to attribute to pro-lifers, as parents have the legal power to compel an abortion. In fact, forced abortions do take place in the United States--to minor girls. You could not find a pro-life candidate for office or officer of National Right to Life, ALL, or any other high-profile pro-life organization in the nation who would advocate any punishment at all for a minor whose child was aborted. I suppose there might be some fringe individuals who would, but I don't know a single one of them, if so.

But abortionists certainly should get jail time, and IMO plenty of it. If we could get to the point of legally punishing abortionists, I and all the other pro-lifers around would be dancing in the streets.

But abortionists certainly should get jail time, and IMO plenty of it.

I agree, although I remain unsure of what the punishment should be for women who are certainly accessories to these murders. I am not quite sure how a woman could conspire to intentionally kill her child and receive no punishment.

I'm quite sure how: A) It's not politically remotely feasible to mete out any punishment to the women, and this is in part because B) it can be difficult to separate women who are indubitably complicitous (though such do certainly exist) from those who are pushed into it by boyfriends, etc.

But I really think pro-lifers should be thrilled if performing abortions were criminalized. It would be an enormous victory. I do not think it will happen in my lifetime, even if I live another 50 years (which is perhaps not all that likely).

It should be increasingly obvious by now, even to the most thoroughly self-blinkered partisans, that Fred is, and always has been, for sale to the highest bidder. His ideological center has no more structure than that of a vanilla butter creme.

I'm quite sure how: A) It's not politically remotely feasible to mete out any punishment to the women, and this is in part because B) it can be difficult to separate women who are indubitably complicitous (though such do certainly exist) from those who are pushed into it by boyfriends, etc.

Your main objection appears to be a practical one. I am not sure how the second objection exonerates the woman from choosing to get an abortion, unless the boyfriend physically induces the abortion against her will. Doesn't this amount to something similar to a "my boyfriend made me do it" defense? I suppose the concern is that the burden will ultimately unfairly rest on the woman.

What do you do with pharmaceutical abortifacients or other self-induced abortions? Do you only punish the administer of the drugs or do you punish the women that actually use the drug? In this case, the administers are not actually killing the baby; the mother is.

It would be quite easy to outlaw RU486. In fact, its legality as a drug on the market had to be positively forced through, with hurried and half-baked FDA review, in (as I recall) the Clinton administration. You just outlaw the sale and manufacture of the drug. And that particular cocktail has _no_ therapeutic uses. It was concocted _solely_ to induce early abortion. So there would be no medical difficulty outlawing it. I see no added legal benefit to penalizing those who procure it, and it would become fairly difficult to procure once its sale in the U.S. was illegal.

You might be surprised at how pushy boyfriends can get. Does that remove _entirely_ the complicity of the woman? Usually not, though there have been cases of the boyfriend literally beating the girl up in front of the abortion clinic when she wouldn't go inside. But even in cases of threats of violence, both law and morality usually recognizes this as extenuating. For example, I don't think people believe that a woman is committing fornication if she does not put up the maximum physical struggle against a rapist who threatens her with a weapon. That, of course, is an extreme example.

Look, don't get me wrong: You're right, my main point about not making _any_ attempt to levy _any_ penalty against _any_ woman who procures and abortion is indeed a pragmatic one. And I make no apology for that. Also, I myself have often decried the rhetoric that implies that there are no cold-hearted mothers out there, that all women who procure abortion are somehow pressured into it. As a simple matter of fact, that isn't true.

But I do think on the other hand that it's important to admit that there are quite a few who _are_ pressured, sometimes in fairly extreme ways (parents can simply tell a girl "you _are_ getting an abortion," the way they would about any other medical procedure, and march her off), and that this _is_ extenuating.

Look, don't get me wrong: You're right, my main point about not making _any_ attempt to levy _any_ penalty against _any_ woman who procures and abortion is indeed a pragmatic one

That seems reasonable. I definitely think the priority should be to abolish abortion and abortifacient drugs. If parents then force their daughters into "back alley abortions", then they should be punished. I still get the feeling that some women (and men) may be "getting away with murder", but I suppose in some cases there just isn't much that can be done.

You try to have it both ways. Either abortion is murder, or it's a medical procedure. If it's murder, we have laws against it already. The analogy is to hiring a hit-man. The abortionist is the hit-man, the woman is his employer. If we are talking about persuasive boyfriends, simply contemplate Charles Manson, who is serving a life sentence for his "persuasions." If we are talking about insistent parents, the parents are the employers of the hit-man. In such a murder, both the hit-man and those who pay for his work are culpable under the laws against murder.
In point of fact, nobody seems to believe that abortion is *really* murder, or pragmatism would not be entering this conversation. There are pragmatic reasons behind a good percentage of the murders committed by people who are, for one reason or another, desperate. That might mitigate the sentence eventually handed down, but it doesn't put the crime into different category.

You try to have it both ways.

I don't think so; I think she is just making a practical point. I would say for myself though that in the long run[*] I wouldn't legally treat a woman who procured an abortion any differently than I would treat a woman who hired someone to drown her children in the tub.

[*] The "in the long run" qualifier isn't merely a matter of prudence, it is a matter of justice. It is undeniably the case that a change from abortion-on-demand to abortion treated legally as the murder that it in fact is, is a radical change from the status quo. That means that as a matter of justice there needs to be a "grace period", not wherein abortion isn't treated as murder, but wherein the sanctions are merciful with respect to the fact that people are adapting to the change. But unlike most pro-lifers - and Lydia is right that my own view does not represent the mainstream pro-life view - I do think that abortion should ultimately be treated legally as the act of murder that it is.

"You might be surprised at how pushy boyfriends can get."

Indeed. It can be threatened physical violence, or, if the girl/woman is poor or unemployed, the threat that "I'll leave you, then you'll be alone with no money and a baby. Who'll take care of you then?"

I know women who've been in both situations, sometimes simultaneously, with the same loser of a man issuing both threats.

"That means that as a matter of justice there needs to be a "grace period", not wherein abortion isn't treated as murder, but wherein the sanctions are merciful with respect to the fact that people are adapting to the change."

Zippy--
Would this not be an adaptation to a reinterpretation of the positive law, while ignoring the natural law, which has never changed? Moreover, how much "adaptation" is really necessary, when the Boomers, who are still in control of the legal and political machines in this society, all remember quite vividly when abortion was illegal across the board?
I'm just looking for moral consistency here and not finding it.

Rodak, I am quite familiar with the pro-choice attempt to portray pro-lifers as "inconsistent" if they aim for the goal of punishing the "hit man"--the abortionist who actually encounters and directly murders the unborn child. I will not be drawn in that way. If ultimate and perfect justice were done, the woman who was lied to ("It's just a blob of tissue") but did not exercise due diligence to find out if this was true would receive some light sentence, the boyfriend who threatened to leave her would himself receive quite a heavy sentence, and the abortionist who sucked out the child and reassembled its arms and legs in a dish would receive the heaviest sentence of all. (Remember me, the death penalty advocate?) The woman who proudly proclaims her abortion and obviously had full knowledge that she was having her child killed would be jailed while the woman who grew up in ignorance of nearly all scientific fact, was shown a grainy still-shot, uninterpreted ultrasound, and pressed to ask no more questions by an insistent husband threatening to leave her would receive no punishment at all or only a token fine.

By the same token, in absolutely perfect justice the person who notices the red light out of the corner of his eye and runs it anyway because he wants to get to the gym would receive a heavier fine than the person who is worrying about the fact that he has cancer and doesn't even see the red light. But they both get the same fine.

These sort of blunt-instrument aspects of law can go in either direction.

And what about rape? I believe it should carry the death penalty in perfect justice, but no one tries to tell me I "don't really believe its rape" if I don't push for the death penalty for it.

Parents who teach their children to hate Jews probably deserve a very stiff punishment in the eyes of God, but for prudential reasons of doing more harm than good we shouldn't try to monitor their teaching and punish it.

And so on and so forth.

Legal penalties throughout the positive system are a patchwork of considerations of justice *and* prudence *and* practicality. There are uncountable numbers of acts that I think ideally would be punished more severely than they are punished. There are uncountable numbers of acts that I realize would bog down the justice system--causing injustice to other people--if we tried to make all the fine distinctions of motive and knowledge required to make the punishment fit the crime exactly.

And please, don't start next telling me that I'd be out there right now with a gun trying to shoot abortionists if I really thought abortion murder, because I've heard that one before, too.

By the way, anybody got anything to say about ol' Fred? Is anyone surprised? I'm a little surprised he even answered Russert's questions on the subject. I would have thought he'd like to keep his pro-life label looking spiffier a little longer.

I didn't really know enough about Thompson to be surprised one way or the other. But it definitely takes him off my list of potential recipients of my vote in the primary.

"And please, don't start next telling me that I'd be out there right now with a gun trying to shoot abortionists if I really thought abortion murder, because I've heard that one before, too."

No, I would hope not. But I think that what you might be doing instead is holding the feet of your elected representatives to the fire until they at least attempt to effect a constitutional amendment stating that an embryo is a "person" from conception with a full set civil rights.
If pro-lifers are serious about it, they shouldn't wait for conservative politicians to stack the SCOTUS with activist judges to achieve their ends. What one activist court rules today can be overturned by the next activist court, after the right-left pendulum has inevitably swung the other way.
Oh, and btw--the fact that you've heard something before doesn't mean that it was misdirected in the first instance, or that it's irrelevant now.


I will settle at this time for being _permitted_ to enact legislation protecting unborn children. It seems to me that it ill behoves liberals and pro-choicers to lecture pro-lifers about strategy. Too often the intent is to try to press pro-lifers to set their sights unrealistically high, thus insuring that they get nothing whatsoever.

And of course it isn't "activist" to tell the truth about the meaning of the Constitution--that it does not contain a right to an abortion (duh!)--and it doesn't become "activist" just because the Roe court already told lies about the Constitution. There is nothing remotely "activist" about overturning Roe, and it should be done yesterday by any justice who has a modicum even of respect for the obvious meaning of _positive_ law.

But Thompson doesn't get to be "pro-life" just because he wants Roe overturned. The whole point of overturning Roe is to set free the legislative process so as to protect the unborn.

According to the Wikipedia article [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade] on Roe v. Wade, there are currently six states which have passed trigger laws that would make abortion illegal if Roe were to be overturned. But there are also seven states which have passed trigger laws that would keep abortion legal under that circumstance. So we can see already the result that would be obtained following such a move by the SCOTUS. Each state would scramble to pass legislation one way or the other. The result would be that abortion would remain easily obtainable by women of means, who could afford to travel to an "abortion state" if it became illegal in their home state. Some poor women, in states where abortion had become illegal, would find it difficult, perhaps impossible, to obtain an abortion in this way. Some of them would then resort to the "back alley."
This state of affairs would doubtless cut down on the total number of abortions performed legally.
But, that said, it is pretty easy to see why a constitutional amendment would be a better, more fair, and more effective route to take.
Whom to punish, and how to punish them, once abortion was made illegal and the black market "service" went into action, would be the remaining controversy, with plenty of room for the exercise of compassion and judicial mercy.

Would this not be an adaptation to a reinterpretation of the positive law, while ignoring the natural law, which has never changed?

No, it wouldn't be that combination of things.

You have to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run. Roe has crippled both our legislative bodies and our moral sensibilities. Any constitutional amendment likely actually to be passed under these circumstances might well be worse for some states than the laws that would obtain were Roe overturned. For example, suppose an amendment were passed but that compromise agreements required that it state that abortion _must_ be legal in cases of rape. But there might well be states that would, sooner or later, enact laws without such a rape exception.

For "fairness" in the sense that I think you mean it, Rodak, I care not a fig. If poor women are protected by their poverty from the mortal sin of obtaining an abortion, so much the better.

"No, it wouldn't be that combination of things."

Are you positive about that?


Lydia--
The constitutional amendment that I would propose would simply state that a fetus is a person in the legal sense from the moment of conception, having full protection under the constitution. No gray areas. Anything less would be, as you say, a compromise which would only shift the focus of the conflict.
And such an amendment would allow you to keep your full basket of figs.

Remember, Rodak, that it is not implausible to interpret the Constitution as not protecting people against private violence, nor requiring that the states and laws do so. We had a long and interesting debate on that legal topic here, to which I invited Crimson Catholic.

Generally the 14th Amendment is taken, and may have been intended, to protect against the state's taking life, liberty, or property without due process of law. This says nothing about the state's protecting anyone--born or unborn--against other private individuals' taking life, liberty, or property.

Generally the 14th Amendment is also interpreted as making race a "suspect class" when it comes to laws that protect some people more than others from private crime. It _might_ be possible for a pro-life constitutional amendment also to make unborn-ness a "suspect class" as far as laws that protect the born against murder but not the unborn. But just saying "full protection under the constitution" isn't going to do that, because the protections of the constitution are first and foremost against government action, whereas it is usually private individuals (abortionists) rather than government entities who kill unborn children.

Well, that just shows you that I'm not a constitutional lawyer. But I'm sure that we can find some who can word the thing in such a way as to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish here, by avoiding those kinds of loopholes.
The whole point of the amendment would be to eliminate the distinction between born and unborn with reference to the ability of a second party to end the life of the unborn with impunity.

However, if this [the protections of the constitution are first and foremost against government action, whereas it is usually private individuals (abortionists) rather than government entities who kill unborn children] is the case, I don't see how the SCOTUS has any jurisdiction in the matter. So why, then, are some pro-lifers calling for a constitutional amendment?

Well, first, a lot of pro-lifers aren't constitutional lawyers, either, nor even nerdy laymen like myself who have tried to follow some of the twists and turns of 14th Amendment jurisprudence. Second, the common use of the 14th Amendment w.r.t. to "discrimination" according to suspect classes has not surprisingly led most people to believe that it is an all-purpose tool for getting people protected regardless of ________ (fill in the blank with whatever you think shouldn't be taken into account when it comes to protecting people).

I think probably the intent of the human life amendment _would_ be to make unborn-ness a suspect class on the same level as race, so that state laws that did not protect the unborn equally with the born, like state laws that protect people differently on the basis of race, would be subject to what's called strict scrutiny--the state would have to prove a compelling interest for the laws making such a distinction, and the burden would be on the state to do so.

I'm willing, albeit somewhat reluctantly, to endorse the idea of a human life amendment. The reason for my reluctance is chiefly that I don't trust SCOTUS. Also, _most_ crime, including murder, is forbidden and punished at the state level, so ideally, abortion would be as well. One problem with federalizing any crime is that it can cause the punishment thereof to be frozen for the entire country in the wrong direction--e.g., as in my example of a compromise amendment that said you _couldn't_ punish abortion in the case of rape.

Are you positive about that?

Yes, I am certain of it.

because the protections of the constitution are first and foremost against government action

IIRC, disparate enforcement of the law (eg, prosecuting murders of whites, but not blacks) has been found to be sufficient government action to trigger Consitutional protections (admittedly, more under the privileges and immunities/equal protection clause than the due process clause).

The Constitution doesn't protect anyone from private action. That's why discrimination cases against private employers are filed under statutory authority, not Constitutional authority. So a Constitutional amendment giving the unborn the rights of persons would (should) kick in all of the legislation against private discrimination, as well as state legislation against murder, etc. If they were considered persons under the Constitution, then they would have to be treated as such by the various laws enacted regarding persons. That is why pro-lifers want a Const. Amendment.

Again, we discussed this at length on here when I proposed an interpretation of the 14th amendment that _would_ have applied it directly to private action. Certainly under present jurisprudential history in the interpretation of the amendment, the reason that disparate laws protecting blacks and whites are litigated under that amendment is because race is what's called a "suspect" category. Not all categories are similarly suspect. So, for example, Ohio has a state law that allows withdrawal of life support from minors without waiting for a year, whereas adults have to have a year waiting period. This could probably not be struck down under present interpretations of the 14th amendment, because age is not a suspect category.

A pro-life amendment would have to make it clear that the intent was to make "being unborn" a suspect category for purposes of 14th amendment jurisprudence, so that laws should not discriminate in protecting the life of persons on the grounds of their being unborn. Probably it could be worded accordingly, but in order to protect against private action as well as state action more would need to be done than just "give the unborn the rights of persons."

Remember too that there are no statutory laws (that I know of) at either the state or federal level against "discrimination" against "persons" in some general sense. It's only in specific areas--like hiring, for example. But unborn children aren't applying for jobs, so the existence of anti-discrimination legislation regarding hiring (or access to buildings or stuff like that ) wouldn't help them.

NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE ENDORSES THOMPSON?

Rank and file prolifers will pay little heed and rightly dismiss this as more machinations from folks who have been "inside the beltway" too long. The only one happier than Thompson, is Giuliani.


Post a comment


Bold Italic Underline Quote

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.