National Review is holding an online symposium in response to Anna Quindlen’s column in Newsweek this week, entitled “How much jail time?,” in which she argues that pro-lifers are dodging the issue of jail time for women who seek abortions in a post-Roe world. There are several great responses, but I especially liked Professor Hadley Arkes’s rejoinder to Quindlen:
Once again we find ourselves twitted by the partisans of abortion to show our own seriousness by our willingness to punish in the severest way the taking of an innocent life. Is the implication that, if we use a gentler hand, we must not really think that human beings are being killed in these surgeries? It has apparently escaped the notice of Ms. Quindlen that the law does not need to invoke the harshest penalties for the sake of teaching moral lessons. The point may be made at times with gentler measures. In the tradition of legislating on abortion, a certain distinction was made out of prudence: On the one hand there may a young, unmarried woman, who finds herself pregnant, with the father of the child not standing with her. Abandoned by the man, and detached from her family, she may feel the burden of the crisis bearing on her alone, with the prospect of life-altering changes. On the other hand, there is the man trained in surgery, the professional who knows exactly what he is doing — he knows that he is destroying a human life, either by poisoning a child or dismembering it. And in perfect coolness and detachment, and at a nice price, he makes the killing of the innocent his office-work. Certain women may indeed be guilty of a callous willingness to destroy a child for the sake of their own self-interest. But the law makes a prudent, tempered choice when it makes the abortionist the target of its censure and brings solely upon him the weight of the punishment.
(LvEO)
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