Hate to say it, but Donald Trump was right: Yes, women who get abortions should be punished.
The billionaire-turned-presidential candidate ignited (another) firestorm last week when he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews “there has to be some form of punishment” for abortion, even for — gasp! — the woman obtaining one. The backlash came from all sides: Democrats, Republicans, pro-choicers and pro-lifers denounced Trump’s comments in unison. He later walked them back, saying the abortionist should be punished if the U.S. were to outlaw the procedure, “not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”
All sides appear to agree with this sickening meme. March for Life released a statement calling Trump’s original comment “completely out of touch with the pro-life movement.” As did National Right to Life, the Susan B. Anthony List and his opponents for the Republican nomination.
“Women who choose abortion often do so in desperation and then deeply regret such a decision. No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion,” March for Life’s Jeanne Marcini said.
The woman is a victim? Desperation?
That notion falls into the narrative the left has been force-feeding us for years. The picture of a young pre-teen who’s been raped by her uncle and has nowhere to go except the nearest Planned Parenthood (which will gladly harvest her baby for parts). Or of a poor, pregnant woman, hopeless and afraid, who turns to a wire hangar in a back alley to solve her “problem.”
But the facts don’t paint such a portrait.
Let’s be honest. The vast majority of women getting abortions in this country are doing it for one reason: birth control. They aren’t victims of some evil abortionist forcing them to kill their babies. And this isn’t the ’30s — condoms are given out like candy and birth control is readily available.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adolescents account for a mere four-tenths of 1 percent of the more than 1 million abortions performed in the United States each year. Less than 1 percent are the result of rape or incest.
As for the rest, 75 percent of aborting women say the baby would interfere with work or school (shocker) and more than half of women getting their first abortion say they aren’t ready to be a parent (who is?).
Nearly half have already had their womb vacuumed out, so they’re repeat “victims” in our national dialogue. What’s more, 61 percent of abortions are obtained by women who already have children. Hardly women who don’t know about contraception.
We should feel no sympathy for these women, regardless of how much they “regret” the decision. No one is forcing them into the clinic. They should regret it — that’s part of taking responsibility for your actions. Your “right to choose” is not as easy as taking a pill or putting on a condom. It comes with consequences.
They are not the victims of the horrific act of abortion. The “unborn person” — as Hillary Clinton defines it — is.
If (Lord, let it be so) the United States were to ban the procedure, both the woman and the doctor deserve punishment for killing what would be a protected human life under the law. They are both accomplices to murder.
We don’t let the mob boss off the hook for hiring a hit man to kill his rivals. Why, then, would a woman who hires a doctor to scrape the life out of her uterus go scot-free?
Which is what makes the “mainstream” pro-life position so baffling. If we truly value human life, then, yes, those responsible for killing innocents deserve punishment — whether they wield the scalpel or not.
Inoculating women from personal responsibility might make a ban easier to swallow in our abortion-on-demand society, but that changes nothing. Thwarting responsibility is the reason we’ve killed more than 57 million unborn babies since 1973. If women aren’t held accountable, a ban would have no effect on the demand for abortion, and underground doctors would meet that supply.
Under the “mainstream” position, John Gotti should have never gone to prison.
