In 2007, the conservative magazine National Review hosted an online symposium in response to a Newsweek column by Anna Quindlen titled “How Much Prison For Women Who Have Abortions?” She argued that anti-abortion activists were dodging the reality that overthrowing Roe v. Wade would entail. If abortion became a crime in the United States, she wrote, those trying to enforce such a law would have only two choices: “Hold women accountable for a criminal act by sending them to prison, or refuse to commit the act.” criminalize in the first place. If you can’t bear the first,” she wrote, “you must accept the second. You can’t have it both ways.”
Her point was that if you call abortion murder, if the law changes, you’re going to have to treat those who have abortions as murderers. Were people willing to do that?
Rather than answering Quindlen’s question, would women who undergo abortions be put in jail, and if so, for how long? – many of the National Review respondents seemed to brush it off as an irritating hypothetical thought, with one calling it a “desperate attempt to distract the public” and another a “fear and panicked wedge issue”.
Walter M. Weber of the American Center for Law and Justice rejected Quindlen’s premise, arguing that women were not arrested for having abortions before the 1973 Roe decision and that no law enforcement agency would prioritize arresting women who had abortions. above the medical professionals who perform them. In other words, women wouldn’t be locked up for having abortions, because they just… they wouldn’t be, I guess. (I am reminded of a brilliant piece in 2003’s The Onion entitled “This War Will Destabilize the Entire Mideast Region and Set Off a Global Shockwave of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won’t.”)
Now the hypothetical has become a reality—or will, if the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion were to topple Roe v. Wade. States will be able to pass laws banning abortion.
And again, conservative writers long committed to the cause seem clouding. As Kevin Williamson wrote in National Review on Thursday, a post-Roe America would be one where Americans would simply enjoy the benefits of France’s abortion law, which bans abortion after 14 weeks. (The Mississippi court law, which will remain in effect if Roe is thrown out, bans almost all abortions after 15 weeks.) “If your idea of a right-wing Christo-fascist hell is Paris,” he wrote, “then you should psychiatrist, not an abortionist.” Conservative radio host Erick Erickson argued this week that Roe’s end wouldn’t change much all in all.
In response to an email, Williamson told me, “Bringing abortion policy back to the democratic theater doesn’t give the pro-life movement the power to dictate abortion policy — nor should we want to.”
But have no doubt that the anti-abortion people will, in fact, dictate abortion policies in dozens of states — and their policies will mirror the statements of course they have been making abortions for 50 years and calling abortion murder, which is why people who have abortions should be punished as murderers. It doesn’t matter how many commentators like Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal warn them, “Don’t start whining like big dumb misogynists about how if a woman gets an illegal abortion, she could be put in jail.”
On Wednesday, Louisiana lawmakers already introduced a bill calling any abortion that occurs “from the moment of conception” an act of murder. On March 19, a candidate for Attorney General of Michigan argued that there should be no exceptions to an abortion ban, even to save the mother’s life†
These are the same people I grew up with. I know that their opposition to abortion is deeply rooted, whether in the Catholic Church where I grew up, or in the evangelical Christian circles where I spent much of my online life as a teenager. No one on the Christian bulletin boards I visited craved French abortion laws. Anti-abortion groups, such as Students for Life, did not advocate limiting abortion in the first trimester. They wanted, as their website now states, the abolition of abortion. No ifs, ands or 15 week restrictions and no exceptions for rape or incest cases. The belief that any abortion was an act of murder was a standard view, so common it passed almost unnoticed by my eyes.
The problem is that these beliefs, which include sending women to prison for having abortions, are not palatable to the general public. Many Americans are against some abortions, but few are against all abortions. A majority want abortion in the first trimester and in cases of rape and incest. As the editors of National Review argued in 2015, while the proponents of abortion bans without exceptions “is a defensible position”, “it is very unpopular”. The best, they reasoned, was not to talk about it. In addition, the editorial continued, “perhaps in a post-Roe v. Wade America a state or two would ban abortion even in cases of rape, and those who wanted such abortions would have to cross state lines. But even that is on the edge of the possibilities.”
And now we are here. The questions that were so easily brushed aside by some abortion opponents will have to be answered. If abortion was to be punished as a crime in some states and an increasing number of women are performing abortions themselves with drugs delivered by mail, would those women be punished? If so, how? For how long?
Maximalism is a privilege, an indication of the time spent imagining countless possibilities without ever having to put them into practice. And it’s one that some anti-abortion people have had for decades. There’s no need to explain what the penalties for abortion should be or even what abortion means (some forms of birth control perhaps?) if you have the luxury of never having to argue the case in front of a voting public that is very much in favor of you disagree.
But now that privilege is gone. So don’t tell me about France.
