So, it's murder, but you shouldn't go to jail?

Check out this little piece interviewing pro-life demonstrators who support making abortion illegal, where they are each asked "What should the punishment be for women who have had an illegal abortion?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo

Now I have no idea how many people they had to ask this in order to get these few people who were totally taken aback by this question (and it's also interesting that they were almost all women, while most of the pro-life demonstrations I've seen have been well represented by the dudes, maybe the menfolk are a little quicker to suggest locking the abortin' ladies up), but I will point out that I used to live not far from Libertyville, IL and it's a pretty small town that's also pretty liberal, so I doubt there were more than a couple dozen people at whatever that was.

Particularly the second person, the lady with the red shirt and glasses, who was totally confident that abortion was the murder of a human being but thought we should just pray for the women who have illegal abortions, they shouldn't go to jail or be punished in any way. If her point is that judgement is for God alone so we don't need to punish them here, then why wasn't she quick to offer that murderers being given jail sentences is also irrelevant when pressed on that point?

Also, "Is that your judgement or God's judgement?" "Both." Glad they're on the same wavelength! The interviewer is a bit of a douche, but really it's just striking how these people haven't thought this through at all. The one thing pro-lifers have on their side is a clear-cut definition of when life begins, there is a pretty specific moment when a sperm hits an egg. No pro-choicer out there can tell you the exact moment when they think a ball of cells become a human being. So anyway, pro-lifers, think it through a bit more. You can't go waving photos of bloody fetuses in my face all the damn time screaming about murder but tell me the girl I'm escorting to the clinic shouldn't be punished if you succeed.

Wait, actually, don't. Stay confused.

Anyway, there are plenty of countries where abortion is illegal and women are prosecuted for it, and that article is pretty striking all on its own:

"The abortion rates are highest in Chile and Peru (where one woman in 20 has an induced abortion). In Brazil, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, it's about one woman in 30, and in Mexico approximately one in 40. (In the United States, the rate is 21.3 per 1,000 women.)"

and

"And while abortion is legal in cases of rape or a threat to life, the actual mechanism to get permission to have a legal abortion is so complex that it discourages women. Alonso points out that last year in Mexico City, only 17 legal abortions were approved, yet there are 30 rapes reported to police per day there."

I'm not sure how reliable her facts and figures are here, as I have no information whatsoever about the fact-checking group over at "WeNews", but you can read more about the incredibly sad state of Mexico's abortion and sex policies in this report from Human Rights Watch (the age of consent is 12! All incest is consensual! Dios mio!). I don't really feel like independently verifying that 1 in 20 claim right now, but if it's close to true, yikes! (Also note she said Mexico's rate is "approximately one in 40" but the US's is "21.3 per 1,000 women". Do you have better data, or does "21.3 in 1,000" look better than "approximately one in 50"? Hmm.)