Degrees of conviction

In California, premeditated murder is punishable by 25 years to life in prison and, in certain cases, the death penalty. It follows that if abortion is murder, women who choose them must be incarcerated or put to death.

I once had a difficult but respectful discussion with a staunchly anti-abortion co-worker about the beginning of life and the rights of women and embryos. He had strong convictions and a lot to say, until I raised the subject of punishment:

“So, if your side takes over, will you put women and their doctors in prison or to death for abortion? Will you push to have the tens of millions of American women who have had abortions in the past 40 years face trial for murder? Certainly there can be no statute of limitations on the prosecution of a murder? Will women who have had abortions because they were raped face the same sentences as women who had them for other reasons?” His response was to search for something to say, give up and then turn and walk away.

Even in places where abortion is heavily criminalized and women are routinely punished for it, there may be a reluctance to be perceived as considering abortion equivalent to murder.

In the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, for example, all abortions are illegal, in spite of an overriding federal law that allows them in cases of rape or where giving birth threatens the mother’s life. Since 2001, when Guanajuato’s current governor,

Romero Hicks, took office, abortion has been criminalized, punishable by 15 to 30 years in prison, according to the newspaper La Nueva Tribuna.

Under the Guanajauto law, abortions are “homicide of a family member by injury to a product of gestation.”

According to Human Rights Watch, during the past eight years, Guanajuato “has denied every petition by a pregnant rape victim for abortion services” and about 130 of its residents have been sentenced for seeking or providing an illegal abortion.

And yet the cases of seven women freed from prison last week in Guanajuato after serving three to eight years of sentences ranging up to 29 years, illustrate how even the harshest state will hedge on the punishment issue.

National attention on the case led the state government to conclude that the women’s 25-to-35-year sentences “were inappropriate, given that they were excessively punitive” and to pass a legal reform reducing their sentences to three to eight years—in other words, the amount of time the women had already served.

According to women’s-rights activist Veronica Cruz, quoted in the Latin American Herald Tribune, of the seven cases, one was a spontaneous abortion, two others were undertaken because of rape and the rest were for accidental pregnancies.

But state prosecutors maintain that the women’s trials were fair and that their babies were born alive but died because of mistreatment or lack of care, not abortion.

Activist organization Centro Las Libres told the Latin American Herald Tribune that “the government always has denied that it imprisoned people for the crime of abortion. We had to go from prison to prison to verify it.”

The point here is that even a government that’s actively throwing raped women in jail for having abortions does not want to be perceived as throwing raped women in jail for having abortions.

But if one truly believes that abortion is murder, then an unwillingness to call for the severe punishment of women who have abortions is to be wishy-washy about murder.

And since so many shy away from the punishment issue, I can only conclude that those who maintain that a zygote is a person with all of the rights personhood entails either don’t really believe it or lack the courage of their convictions.

To test these claims, I tried to contact a number of prominent, outspoken local and national anti-abortion activists, including Miles McPherson of The Rock Church, Jim Garlow of Skyline Church, Pastor David Jeremiah of Shadow Mountain Community Church and Pastor Mike MacIntosh of Horizon Christian Fellowship, as well as activists Lila Rose, president of Live Action, and Cheryl Sullenberger of Operation Rescue, for a simple statement in response to these three questions about the Guanajuato case:

1. Do you think it was appropriate for the women to have their sentences reduced to the three to eight years they’d already served? 2. What do you think the correct prison sentence should be for a woman who has terminated a pregnancy? 3. Should it be lessened for a woman who has terminated a pregnancy that occurred because she was raped?

As of press time, only Pastor Chris Clark of East Clairemont southern Baptist Church responded with a statement. It’s about what you’d expect. Clark’s church “values and strongly advocates the sanctity of human life” but “do[es] not have sufficient information” to answer my first question. You’d think he and all the others I contacted would be, at the very least, eager to answer the second question with a resounding “25 to life!” Oh yeah—that would only happen if we were really talking about murder.

Write to dak@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.