We're having this same discussion in the letters section for Tim Grieve's "Trick Question" article.

I say "yes". If abortion is in fact muder, *everyone* associated with the abortion should be arrested (murder, accessory, abetting, whatever their role there is an appropriate charge.) If a blastocyte/zygote/embryo/fetus is a fully-realized person, then there is no difference whatsoever between my hiring a doctor to remove it from my uterus and my hiring a hit-man to shoot my five-year-old in the head.

As long as we're going to hell in a handbasket, it would be interesting to see the looks on those fundie's faces when Susie Cheerleader and Maureen McMotherOfFour get nailed for first-degree murder and sent to prison for 25 years, along with the best friend/boyfriend/husband/mother who drove them to and from the clinic and fed them Advil and chicken noodle soup while they were laid up in bed afterwards.

Anything less is hypocrisy and moral equivocation. The 'nice' crowd may be more palatable, but their position lacks integrity. The one good thing I can say about the 'you're all murderers' crowd is that at least their argument is consistent.

This is an amusing concept, because it would reveal to the wilfully ignorant average American the vast numbers of everyday women who obtain abortions-- why do people never talk about how common it is? We act like it's some secret moral crime when in fact millions of women in sound mind choose it every day. Probably every person in America would see someone they love off to prison in such a scenario, and it would dawn on them that abortion is a common experience for a huge segment of the female population --ordinary people that you love, not moral criminals-- a fact which seems strangely absent from most debates about abortion, esp. now that fundies seem to have the mic in every aspect of this debate, including this ridiculous theoretical idea of sending women to prison-- even entertaining this theory is just reactionary and not worth the time of people who defend the right to choose.

I can't believe women are even going on the defensive about something so clearly essential and widespread; it shows you how much power the fundies have gained in recent years that such an essential and common procedure as abortion is even up for question, and pro-choice women are spending their time pondering a world where women go to prison for having abortions. These same ideas come from people who think god will tractor-beam them to heaven while people who question dogma and prejudice will be left to BBQ in the inferno. And we are seriously debating and entertaining their viewpoints?

I think women who support the right to abortion need to stop being reactionary to religious wingnuts who don't want to think rationally about social problems, and focus instead on reinforcing reality: women need abortions. They always will. Massive tides of unwanted pregnancy will not magically go away just because fundies deny women access to safe medical procedures. We will either provide them safely in this country, without hand-wringing and apology, or we won't. Which side would you like to fight on?

that expecting to succeed using logic on true believers is about as sensible as expecting to make a profit shipping oil to Saudi Arabia.

If abortion is to be considered legally as murder, wouldn't every miscarriage have to be investigated as a possible criminal homicide?

The anti-abortion faction has largely succeeded in labeling choice as extreme. The opposite of banning abortion is mandatory abortion. Choice is the middle ground.

What has been clear to me for the last 20 years or so is that the anti-choice movement has nothing to do with children, morality, or public safety. These folks care about children until they are born. Girl children can only be in the constitution until they are born, at which point, as the fundies have told us for years, it is wrong to write them in under the ERA.

This is a movement about controlling women's sexuality, it always has been, and as proof shown in this video, it always will be. If it were about protecting children, then the women and the doctor should go to jail, because it is murder. And, the federal government would provide wholesome caring day care, and/or pay women to stay home and care for their children. But that, my friends is not what is being advocated.

If it were about "morality" (their definition, not mine), we should punish the murders, doctors, nurses, women. Oh yeah, and freedom would have to become an immoral concept.

Finally, if it were about public safety, they use the line that crime has increased since 1973 because we created a "culture of death", they would just give up, given the proof in Freakenomics that having fewer unwanted children in the world actually reduces the crime rate. (Duh!)

So what are we left with? Controlling women. We have the power to both create and destroy life. That power, in other cultures, has been worshipped. In this culture, the fear powerful women engender even in other women is the monster that must be stopped. Control their fertility and sexuality as it was done in the "good old days" before the pill and legal aborition, with the fear of pregnancy and poof - all of societial problems disappear. Boy, I wish I could see the world in such black and white terms.

By the way, until we start talking about it in these stark terms, we will continue to see out right eroded under the guise of "morality," "protecting children," and "public safety." I am very tired of those (Hillary) who talk about abortion as always a tragic choose. Sometimes it is the best choice. And NO WOMAN should have to apologize for that.

Pro-lifers are really only guilty of not thinking through their terminology. They choose the word, "murder" for the dramatic effect, but really they just think abortion is morally wrong. I understand that in legal terms, the word holds great sway, but we're shooting fish in a barrell if we're going to go after the intellectual capacities of the religious right. Do you really think they consider abortions to be on the same level as premeditated murder? Well, they just might. The larger issue would be the actual legal problems the termination of a pregnancy bring up. Please do not use the Pro-Life platform to be the measuring stick for the anti-abortion stance.