Abortion (Give me the best of the best)

Previously I talked about the punitive impact anti choice policies and practices have on married women. In this segment I will focus on how abortion bans are only part of a punitive and coercive approach toward unmarried women who find themselves pregnant and particularly young married women. What it comes down to is punishing women who get pregnant outside the boundaries of marriage. Allowing abortion would permit such 'immoral' women to escape punishment. Such punishment is more subtle and insidious than it was in the past. In the old days your biological mother, a few days after giving birth, would be standing in the village square naked from the waist up and screaming in pain as each of a dozen lashes were laid across her back. Now your biological mother if we your back in the old days could have avoided the flogging if she were able to hide your birth. There was one way of doing this without killing the baby and disposing of the body. Which was to turn the baby over to what your called baby farmers.. The baby farmers would then sell the babies on the black market. Some of these baby farmers were individuals providing a service to desperate girls with unwanted pregnancies. Others were parts of organized crime syndicates who trafficked in human flesh. Lets bring it to today. We will see there is a parallel to the baby farming of the past. Something which I will get to later. For now we will address the subtle and insidious punishments imposed on pregnant unmarried women. By the way there are still parts of the world where the more harsh punishments are still imposed on unmarried women who get pregnant and for doing what results in pregnancy but here we will just talk about the more 'civilized' world. Use as our example a single 16 year old woman. Lets do this chronologically and list what the hardcore anti choice contingent would do to demonstrate their coercive and punitive attitude towards her 1. They would deny to her sexuality education which would enable her to make informed choices about whether or not to have sex and if she choose to have sex to be able to do so safely 2. They would deny her access to contraceptives which would prevent unwanted pregnancies. And even worse they would deny her access to emergency contraceptives which would prevent pregnancy in the case of rape. 3. They would have it so she wasn't vaccinated against certain types of cancer. A very clear indicator of the intent to punish women for having sex outside of marriage and especially at an early age. 4. When the woman finds herself pregnant; it does not matter how she got pregnant they would deny her an abortion. Lets go on to the next step 5. Ostensibly the woman would have two choices. One would be to keep the baby and raised it herself. Or she could give the baby up for adoption. But in reality they would give her only one choice unless she was willing to marry. Only if she married could she keep her baby. 6. How do they enforce a practice of compulsory marriage? Simple. One way is to deny to the single mother direct or indirect financial assistance. Thereby forcing her to go to work or depend on someone else such as a husband to support her and her baby. 7. Going to work isn't really an option for the woman either as the opponents of abortion whose real motivation is not the baby but to control the lives of women. What they do is to deny such a woman access to safe and affordable day care which would allow her to support herself and her baby. So there are two both rather coercive options left; especially when these aren't the choices the woman really wants to make. One is to give the baby up for adoption. The second is to marry preferably the baby's father. 8. Taking a look at the marriage option we must note opponents of abortion have also opposed the creation and operation of shelters and services for abused and battered women because to quote one 'such shelters would encourage women to leave their husbands' So what they would do here is compel a woman to marry or stay with an abusive man 9. As for the adoption option-- this is an industry which is and has been riddled with corruption from the baby farmers of the past to the sex traffickers and suppliers of international pedophile rings of today. Underlying the exploitation of women and their babies is greed. I mentioned earlier if a woman such as your biological mother want to avoid a flogging for having given birth to a bastard child she would turn the baby over to a so called baby farmer or would dispose of it in some other way. The penalty for concealing an illicit pregnancy and the birth which results was death by hanging. Which brings me to ask a question. Actually several questions Do you believe it should be a crime for a woman to have an abortion? If yes should she punished as if she had committed murder which would mean if she paid someone to perform the abortion she would face execution? Answering this question for myself; if I believed abortion was murder and I believed in the death penalty which I don't but if I did I would have no hesitancy giving your teenage mother the needle if she had paid someone to abort you. Of course your mother was a child herself but still old enough to know she would die if she had you aborted. Now if that is too extreme or for whatever reason don't believe in capital punishment or that the rhetoric abortion is murder isn't really honest and that abortion while it should be a crime should be a lesser one than murder what punishment should the woman receiving for aborting her baby. And let me say this. The fact I support a woman's reproductive rights across the board moots the following assertion. If it is a crime to have an abortion it is patently absurd a woman shouldn't be punished within the criminal justice system for having one. To suggest she shouldn't be punished is to impose on her the status of a child even after she has turned 18 or 21. Incapable of making decisions on giving birth or not.