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Thursday, March 31, 2016

WAS TRUMP WRONG IN SAYING IF A PERSON BREAKS THE LAW THEY SHOULD BE PUNISHED?

Let me be clear, I think that the punishment should fit the crime. If you are caught speeding, even though there is no one else on the highway, you should pay the fine.

If you let someone you know who is drunk get in his car to drive away after a party at your home, and that person kills or injures someone, you should be punished in a court of law or at least sued.

If abortion becomes illegal, it should be made clear to those who provide illegal abortions that they will be arrested and sentenced according to their crime.

And those who use the illegal facility should be punished as well just as anyone who uses a prostitute, or goes into an illegal gambling business, or is frequenting a drug establishment.

Many criminals have been sentenced to prison for killing a  mother and her unborn baby. Yes, they were charged with two counts of murder. Is this wrong? No!

If a priest can be sentenced to prison for fondling a child inappropriately, I don't understand why anyone would think it outrageous if a mother hires someone to kill their unborn child. Don't people get arrested and sentenced to prison for hiring others to kill loved ones and those who are a nuisance in their lives?

All that I say above has to be based upon law and what constitutes a crime and what the consequences are if one is guilty for breaking the law.

People go to prison everyday for much less than killing a child or hiring someone to do it.

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM WITH THIS?

And on March 18th, nine Augusta teenagers were arrested for murder in this riot videoed by one of the participants. One of these in the brawl was stabbed in the neck and died resulting in the nine arrests. Should these teenagers get away with murder?
 

15 comments:

James said...

Having an abortion is punishment enough, I'd have thought. However wrong it is for a woman to take this step, no woman does it casually or frivolously.

Two years ago, my wife developed bacterial meningitis while she was pregnant, and the baby died at fourteen weeks (we don't know if it was the meningitis or the antibiotics which killed her). My wife then had to undergo what is euphemistically called a "D & C" to remove the baby. To our horror, it turned out that this procedure was carried out in the same hospital department as on-demand abortions (our Great British NHS is not always the most sensitive of organizations!). So I sat in a waiting room for two hours alongside teenage girls who were about to undergo abortions. It was quite a salutary experience, as before that time I'd assumed that only very selfish, shallow or heartless women could abort their babies. I'm still very hostile to abortion, but I'll never forget the anguish, fear and guilt on those girls' faces. It would be very wrong to criminalize them.

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

Thank you James for sharing this.

Anonymous said...

Well, if we believe that abortion is murder then, yes, murder should exact a punishment of some kind. Any person - even the young these days - are being found guilty if they have been involved in any way in taking the life of another. Harsh as it may seem, having to face a penalty might be the only way to make some young women stop and think about their actions before they collude in the taking of an innocent life.

Jusadbellum said...

When the federal government outlaws abortions once again, then yes, both parties of the killing will pay some penalty - just as they do in every OTHER type of crime.

Punishing the women will DETER future women from seeking abortions and thus save lives of both women and their children.

What Trump just did in a maladroit way was to move the 'Overton' window. People can laugh now, but he was actually right. If we make some transaction illegal but only prosecute the 'seller' and not the buyer, the law won't dissuade.

Paul said...

"For they know not what they do."

I really wonder if some people still know what abortion really is. Since the right to priv, er, choice became law of the land look how perceptions towards abortion have changed (even amongst conservatives):

Don't punish the mother because because of a possible "War On Women".
Anyone who advocates punishment is "extreme" (or worse).
Flood the prisons with women? That's crazy.
Sane "right-to-life" supporters do not advocate punishment.

Have people forgotten what abortion is?

As with any mortal sin there can be mitigating circumstances and since the legitimate government has legalized such actions thus giving the appearance of permission it is not surprising that we have people utilizing this "escape path" at the rate of 4,000 per day in the USA. All of this thinking is wrapped up in slogans containing "freedom", "liberty", "choice" and "empowerment". With all of this "support" it is not surprising that the young are manipulated and make horrible choices.

Have people forgotten what abortion is?

Carol H. said...

Is a bride responsible when she is forced into a shotgun wedding? Many of these girls are being forced into their abortions by boyfriends, husbands, and sadly, even parents. We need to make abortion illegal, but we also need to give these girls a place to run to so they can escape the ones who are forcing them into it.
We need to be willing to give them support and to help them raise their babies until they are married or until they become self sufficient. If we are willing, God will provide the way.

James said...

I agree with Paul that dubious 'education' (in the broadest sense) is to blame for the hideously high abortion figures in the USA and UK. But it's the most deprived groups -- the people with the least control over their lives -- who end up exercising this most dubious of rights. The abortion statistics for African Americans in some districts of New York are a case in point, with the number of abortions significantly exceeding the number of births. This means that the right to life, surely a more fundamental right than abortion, is taken away from over half of the babies conceived.

Anonymous said...

• Eighteen percent of U.S. women obtaining abortions are teenagers; those aged 15–17 obtain 6% of all abortions, 18–19-year-olds obtain 11%, and teens younger than 15 obtain 0.4%.
• Women in their 20s account for more than half of all abortions: Women aged 20–24 obtain 33% of all abortions, and women aged 25–29 obtain 24%.
• Non-Hispanic white women account for 36% of abortions, non-Hispanic black women for 30%, Hispanic women for 25% and women of other races for 9%.
• Thirty-seven percent of women obtaining abortions identify as Protestant and 28% identify as Catholic.
• Women who have never married and are not cohabiting account for 45% of all abortions.
• About 61% of abortions are obtained by women who have at least one child.
• Forty-two percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level ($10,830 for a single woman with no children).
• Twenty-seven percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes between 100 and 199% of the federal poverty level

Jusadbellum said...

Carol, if a woman is forced into an illegal abortion by men, then the men would go to jail. If a woman is forced into prostitution she's let go and the men are jailed.

Anonymous said...

I think we need to deal with the "real world" here---as in the real political world, AD 2016. Talk above about punishing women for having abortions is just what Hillary Clinton wants to hear---that just enhances her already good chances of winning this November (she holds a commanding lead over Trump among women, who by the way make up a majority of voters in this country). Republicans are already at a disadvantage in the Electoral College---since 1992, 21 states with a combined 257 electoral votes have voted Democratic in at least 5 of the last 6 presidential elections (only 270 are needed to win). More of the talk above, and Republicans may as well start planning instead for the 2020 election.

As for the federal government banning abortion, well it never had. Abortion was a state issue---some states in fact were enacting permissive abortion laws prior to Roe v Wade (see California and New York). The Constitution does not give the federal government authority to deal with common crimes (not that Congress has ever been particularly observant of that fact.) If Roe v. Wade were overturned (which it should be just alone on constitutional grounds), then the issue would revolve back to the states, with a mixture of mostly legal, somewhat legal, maybe mostly illegal (such as in Louisiana and Mississippi). The federal government (even if authorized, which I don't believe it is) would never ban abortion---Democrats, the party of death, would always have enough votes to filibuster any such proposal (it takes 60 votes to end a filibuster, and it has been over 90 years since Republicans in the Senate had 3/5 of that body). Trump has had varying positions on abortion over the years anyway---does one really trust him on that issue?

Thus, instead of pushing futile proposals that will never happen, Republicans need to be more focused on defeating Clinton. If she wins, the Supreme Court is gone (translated, liberal majority) for decades---probably past the lifespan of many of us on this blog.


John Nolan said...

I don't know what the situation is in the USA, but in England abortion is only legal if carried out according to the 1967 Act (although the Act, which only allows termination on medical grounds has been so liberally interpreted as to effectively allow abortion on demand). Otherwise it is a criminal offence, and this applies to a woman who attempts, successfully or otherwise, to abort her unborn child even if no other party is involved.

The Act does not apply to Northern Ireland where abortion is only allowed in exceptional circumstances. So one part of the UK has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the western world.

Paul said...

"Real World", "21st Century" and "Get with the times" arguments fall flat -- all are a forms of moral relativism.

4,000 abortions per day in the USA, legally. That is an insane world. The number of abortions in the USA alone since 1974 is approaching the entire world death total of WWII yet we have people who champion this false "right".

The battle won't end with defeat of Clinton or Sanders. As long as the specious "right to privacy" remains a simple matter of stacking Supreme Court justices then there is something fundamentally wrong with society. The "right to choose" will go back and forth based upon the whims of those desiring power.

Pick one of today's crimes. Will it be crime in 100 years? If not, why not?

Is any "right" just a matter of organizing, expressing the right within the current language of The Constitution and then arguing and hammering society and Supreme Court justices until a "right" is created?

If so, then hang on tight.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I agree we do need to deal with the real world and face the fact that some women are having multiple abortions. It's reported in the US that 50% of women will have more than one abortion. Doing a search it is easy to find women who have had five plus abortions. One women has written a book on her 15 abortions. The following is the case in the UK:

More women are having multiple abortions, according to statistics for England and Wales.

In 2011, 68,105 women having an abortion had already had at least one termination - up from 64,303 in 2010.

The figures include 82 under-16s having their second abortion and two having their third.

The overall number of abortions increased marginally by 0.2% to 189,931.

The annual statistics show 34% of women having an abortion last year had had one before. It continues an increasing trend of 31% in 2001, 32% in 2005 and 34% in 2010.

Post-abortion contraception

Seventy-six women had had at least seven previous abortions.""

While there are no penalties these statistics will get even worse ... we do need to get real.

Anonymous said...

Paul, you can say it is "moral relativism", but neither you or anyone else on this blog has explained how in today's political climate you could get a total, or near total, and universal (nationwide) ban on abortion. I don't like the current situation with the Supreme Court at all---we basically were "stabbed in the back" in 1992 when the Supreme Court fell a single vote short of sending Roe to the gutter---unfortunately 3 Republican appointments, Kennedy, O'Connor and Souter, fell into the murky 60's language of "right to define oneself and the meaning of life." While I can't remember the last time I ever backed a Democrat here in Georgia, even in voting Republican I have learned they can sometimes do things that anger you. Trust in God 100%, but not a political party. We probably need divine intervention to turn this country around, or otherwise I may increasingly ask the question (title of which was a Pat Buchanan book): "Will America survive until 2025?"

Paul said...

Anon, that is why we do place our trust in God. Regardless of political outcome, we must look to and hold on to He that is Truth. No one "gets away" with anything.