Eric Scheidler is in Baltimore assisting Jack Ames’ annual Tell the Truth tour in the Baltimore-Washington area. Jack runs a very effective tour, and likes to have someone from Face the Truth in Chicago accompany him, since we got him started and he likes to review new tactics and get the reports on truth tours taking place all across America.
Eric To Head PP Fight in Aurora
When Eric returns he will channel much of his time and energy in conducting a challenge to the the new Planned Parenthood abortion center in his hometown, Aurora, IL. We wonder if the folks at Planned Parenthood realized when they decided to pollute Aurora with a death camp, that they were on Eric Scheidler’s home turf. Not smart.
Quindlen’s Leading Question
Shortly after Anna Quindlen’s column appeared in Newsweek making fun of pro-lifers on a truth tour in 2005, for not answering the question, “How should women who have abortions be punished when abortion becomes illegal?” the way they wanted it answered, National Review held a symposium on the subject.
Despite trotting out the greatest brains in the pro-life movement, these professionals didn’t answer the question much differently than our volunteers had. What can you say to that question?
We don’t now and never have been interested in punishing women who have abortions. We might like to see the abortionists slapped in jail for life, but never the women who are themselves victims.
Hadley Arkes says it’s the doctor who profits from the woman’s misery and abuses his medical skill to destroy life, who should be get punished. Dorinda Bordlee says the very question is deceptive and desperate, while Marjorie Dannenfelser links the National Institute for Reproductive Health with Quindlen and says their rank misunderstanding of the pro-life movement will ultimately defeat the abortion crowd.
Pia De Solenni says the question is a red herring and Joe Dellalpenna says none of the anti-abortion laws prior to Roe ever considered the woman a criminal, but a victim. This still holds true.
Attorney Clark Forsythe says making abortion illegal would actually intended to defend women, not to degrade them. Matthew Franck says the law must be prudent and patient, and not the product of sophomore logic, as he characterize Quindlen’s proposition.
Richard Garnett of the Notre Dame Law School says the seriousness of a crime is not necessarily determined by the harshness of the penalty that breaking it imposes, and Kristin Hansen says that even thinking of punishing the woman in distress is unthinkable for pro-lifers whose whole movement is built on compassion and concern for the woman in distress. Only pro-aborts would come up with such a question.
Anne Hendershott says pro-lifers seek to change hearts, not impose penalties. Wendy Long thinks Anna Quindlen misses the whole point of the pro-live movement, to persuade a woman to protect her baby and respect herself, while Frederica Matthews-Green says women need compassion and support, not penalties.
Tom McClusky calls Quindlen’s musings smug and her knowledge of pro-life people criminally inadequate. The very act of abortion, McClusky says, is exploitive of women even as it kills her child. According to Mike New of Alabama, the pro-abortionists try to make the situation simple, whereas it is very complex and will take much more than punishment to root out the abortion culture.
Carter Snead calls Quindlen’s argument confused and her legal arguments puzzling and Walter Weber says Quindlen ignores history and human reality. They never did send the women to jail and the woman is a victim.
In conclusion, our witnesses standing along Milwaukee Road and Route 176 in Libertyville back in 2005—and not picketing an abortion clinic as Quindlen said (can’t she get anything right?)—answered the question about punishing women just about as well as the pro-life intellectuals did, and we’re proud of them all.
