Anti-Choice Candidates - is it time to ask the next question?

[sybylla]

I found this exchange today and it got me thinking.

GuestBlog: By Bill Kraus
Candidate interviews
http://www.fightingbob.com/weblog.cfm?PostID=834

Talk show host: I understand you are anti-choice.

Candidate: I am pro-life.

Talk show host: Then you think that Roe v Wade should be overturned.

Candidate: Absolutely.

Talk show host: This would create a vacuum on the choice question. How would you fill it?

Candidate: Legislation should be passed outlawing abortion.

Talk show host: What penalties should the legislation call for?

Candidate: What?

Talk show host: You know, women are going to break this law. What will be they be prosecuted for? Murder? Accessory to murder? Conspiring to murder? What?

<snip>

Since there are certain factions who want to use abortion as a wedge issue, should we not push them into committing to it, to taking the next step, to laying their cards on the table?

If voters had to imagine what those cards would be, because no wedge issue candidate is prepared to answer such a question, would that affect voters choices at the polls?

[Orangepeel]

1. they always say that providers should be prosecuted

not the women

(of course, that professed view didn't stop Tom Feeney from wanted to create a state database of Florida women who'd had abortions).

I don't know how that answer jibes with the republican drive to make it so that ob/gyns can freely practice their love, but that's what they always say when they are asked that question.

[K8-EEE]

2. YES THANK YOU EXACTLY!!!!!

What if you have a miscarriage, and somebody accuses you of DOING someething to cause it? If you go to Mexico or Canada to have an abortion, can you be prosecuted here as a murderer when you come home, like with other "murders?"

What if a husband or boyfriend should accuse you of having ended a pregnancy, what proof does he need to convict you?

Can doctors be made to examine patients to determine what is a miscarriage and what is an abortion, and then made to testify?

Nurses assisting abortions, are they jailed as well?

A teenager with a coathanger -- when she gets out of the hospital should she be jailed, for how long? The same as if she shot somebody at a liquor store?

How much would the prosecution, trials etc of "abortion crime" cost us, the taxpayers?

[JohnnyRingo]

5. Well put...Outlawing legal abortion opens a can of worms unseen by....

...the religious pro-lifers who see the issue in black and white.

How many small town Barney Fifes will want to investigate miscarriages as murder cases, further adding to the mother's trauma?

How many women will hemorrhage and bleed to death in botched back room procedures?

It's also fun to ask these good intentioned people if perhaps the welfare system should be ramped up to provide care for the expected flood of unwanted births.
For some reason pro-lifers usually abhor a welfare state, and wouldn't want their hard earned tax money to go to state run orphanages.

[Minimus]

6. Exactly

I work with religious fanatics who rant constantly about killing unborn babies and how horrible it is, and then in the next breath speak ill of young single women who are on WIC/welfare, etc.

[dsc]

3. That is what a Democracy is for

to make those very kinds of decisions. While the opinon of the lawmaker is relevant, it is the common opinon of the citizenry which is dispositive.

[sybylla]

4. Pres, Congress, House currently all in republican hands

IMHO, it is more than relevant to know the opinion of the candidate when one party alone has the means to establish law.

[ThomCat]

7. If they overturn Roe vs Wade it's WAR!

They've been so busy convincing people on narrow little arguments that abortion is wrong that I don't think most of their converts have throught about what they are really agreeing to.

I don't think they're ready for the vicious implications of thier crusade.

If RvW get's overturned we're going to be an army of very pissed off people. They're going to be wondering why the world isn't suddenly the better place they kept promising it would be. And we're going to finally have the abilty to motivate a whole lot more of the currently-apathetic people who only care about themselves.

It'll get ugly, and then we'll win.

[noamnety]

8. push the birth control question

should women who use the pill be prosecuted for murder?

[sybylla]

9. Shameless Kick

:kick: