Friday, May 02, 2008

Another non-answer to the question

"If abortion is murder, what should the punishment be?"

Heads up: there's a new fetus fetishist in town. "Desley" has been commenting at SUZANNE's place recently, and until yesterday I didn't take much notice of what he had to say. Until, in discussion with someone else, he said


and it just didn't sit right with me. I'm accustomed to the hysterical hyperbole favoured by anti-choicers, but when they toss around words like "murder", I get cranked. Everyone recalls the video where the guy goes around asking anti-abortion demonstrators what the punishment should be for women who have abortions. Predictably, most of the demonstrators are gobsmacked -- with the exception of a few little fascists who easily come up with jail terms they think are appropriate, hardly any of them have even thought about the logical progression of their position that abortion is "murder". So I put the question to "Desley":

Behold the formidable work of weaseltude that was Desley's answer:


So it's like this: "Abortion isn't illegal, but even if it was illegal then it's the doctors not the women who should be punished because they're the ones doing it and the women are all nuts and don't know what they're doing so they should be put in psychiatric care... And anyway I'm not a lawyer so don't ask me." Mmmmkay.

I know, I know... why do I bother?