If abortion is criminalized, how will such laws be enforced?

Anybody can make a law, but enforcing it is something else. Let's just say the fundamentalistwackos get their wish and abortion is made illegal, either in certain states, or everywhere. How will such prohibitions be enforced? What kind of governmental machinery will have to be created to enforce prohibitions on aboriton? What about people who disobey the law? I think we have an obligation to demand that the Right answer these questions.

(in places you aint supposed to mess w/on a pregnant lady)that cause miscarriages. instead of hangers

Interesting bit of history for you:

Until the last third of the nineteenth century, when it was criminalized state by state across the land, abortion was legal before "quickening" (approximately the fourth month of pregnancy). Colonial home medical guides gave recipes for "bringing on the menses" with herbs that could be grown in one's garden or easily found in the woods. By the mid eighteenth century commercial preparations were so widely available that they had inspired their own euphemism ("taking the trade"). Unfortunately, these drugs were often fatal. The first statutes regulating abortion, passed in the 1820s and 1830s, were actually poison-control laws: the sale of commercial abortifacients was banned, but abortion per se was not.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97may/abortion.htm

I imagine RU-486 would soon start popping up in the illegal drug market. Even if women try to go the "natural" route, a lack of information of how to use herbs properly will likely be a problem. You really have to know what you're doing with that stuff.

They'll make an example of a few doctors who perform abortions and the rest will fall into line for fear of losing their licenses. A few patients may be prosecuted if found out, but more will die of back-alley coat-hanger surgery.

Every time I've asked this I get vague responses along the lines of how women won't be prosecuted (because apparently pregnant women are too stupid to be held responsible for their actions), only doctors. Never much beyond that.

Will miscarriages be investigated?

Will women's medical records be made public?

Will exceptions for rape require convictions or just reports?

Will exceptions for the life/health of the mother have to be given by an official board or can individual doctors make the call? (And what will that do to their malpractice insurance?)

Will women who smoke/drink be prosecuted? What if their smoking/drinking results in a miscarriage?

What if I lift something heavy and miscarry? What if I do it even when my doctor told me not to?


It's the war on drugs all over again; just bad, bad policy. Criminalizing the symptoms of more fundamental social problems has never accomplished anything except the creation of more problems.

In the past, when it was illegal, the only place to get an
abortion was in a "back alley" clinic, usually with doctors
who were either criminals, drunks, license suspended, etc. If
you actually got a doctor and not some quack. Conditions were
not sterile or even clean. Often women would look to other
means, which lead to such things as "coat hangers" where they would
do a self administered D&C. Lots of women died in these conditions.

Now it will be worse, given the ability to detect pregnancy now and
the invasion of privacy by the Ashcroft bedroom police. No travel
to foreign country, possibly with women SUSPECTED of wanting to have
an abortion being detained until the birth. Think it can't happen?
I bet it can.

stupidly. With much stupidity.

they wont answer. when it happens how are you going to punish, oh we dont have to go there right now............never get an answer

unevenly and imperfectly. But we have laws like that for many things and we work as best we can. Look at insider trading. It is very hard to prove and thus selectively enforced. Yet, no one here is whining about the unfairness of a Milken going to jail when others went free.

Laws against insider trading do not create the public health disasters that laws against abortion do. It's a simple cost/benefit analysis.

Laws against insider trading are there because if it were allowed it would affect investor confidence. The law addresses a direct, public need, namely confidence in the market.

Laws against abortion do not address the problem of abortion, which is really a problem of unplanned pregnancy. Rather, they create a whole new set of problems while leaving the original problem untouched. Again, it solves nothing to criminalize a symptom.

If the goal really is a reduction in the number of/need for abortions, this is simply not a good way to go about it. It's just bad public policy.

They don't eliminate it, and no law eliminates the conduct in question, but certainly a law that was enforced would reduce. Practicly the law would be aimed at doctors not due to thinking the women aren't responsible but from a simple numbers perspective. A doctor can perform more abortions in one day, than a woman would get in a lifetime.

A doctor can perform more abortions in one day, than a woman would get in a lifetime.

Breaking the law is breaking the law. It is absurd to argue that if abortion is made illegal, the women who have them should not be prosecuted. Where else would such an exception be made? The only reason pro-lifers agree to this stipulation is that they know it would be a PR disaster to start locking up women.

Besides, a big time dealer spreads more drugs than a small time one or even users, but that doesn't mean we leave the latter alone. Hell, we're flooding our jails with all of them. No reason we can't do the same here.

And speaking of drugs, have anti-drug laws reduced drug use? Did prohibition reduce the consumption or availability of alcohol?

We can focus our efforts on sex education and making birth control more available, reducing the need for abortion while still keeping it SAFE for those who need them, or we can go back to living in a world where women's reproductive futures are controlled by the government and a public health nightmare results.

declared murderers, the enforcement will be voluntary. Just like in the 50's and 60's when women suffered nightmarish deaths in illegal clinics/alleys...How utterly sad.

that takes care of all the poor women getting abortions.

The desparate will go to bad docs for the most part and suffer high mortality rates and the rich people will again fly out to Europe
to abort their spawn at discreet docs over there.

Isn't abortion legal and mostly unrestricted in Canada? I don't know about Mexico.

one of the pages or interns would be sent to canada or mexico ?

to prohibit travel to a foreign land for the purpose of having
an abortion. I suspect that care providers will be REQUIRED to
report all pregnancies... and it also wouldn't surprise me that they
start tracking the purchase of home pregnancy testing kits. And if
a woman on the "abortion watch list" travels to another country, she
may be required to show proof that she either isn't pregnant or
if pregnant, did not get an illegal abortion. These people are
very weird about this subject, and since we are talking murder now,
many invasive laws will be passed and ruled constitutional.

... if only by traveling to a jurisdiction where it's legal and paying the high fees. For the rest, the doctor will have his/her license revoced even before prosecution. If the patient refuses to testify, she'll be charged with "obstruction of justice."

That's how it was before Roe v. Wade when I reached the age (and degree of freedom) where it posed a significant fear. I remember a girlfriend who missed her period ... and both of us being potentially faced with that problem. (Yes. Both.)

either did the abortions or facilitated them for their wealthy patients. It was all hush hush. This would probably return.

The people who would face penalties would not be among the wealthy class.
In these times I am sure the Asscrofts of our country would insist on murder trials for the drs who dared to assist the mid and lower class citizens.

Read The Handmaid's Tale.

:kick:

Through the physicians. And like everyone said, it'll be poor women who suffer the most. Wealthy or middle class (if we have one left soon?) will have enough money to pay for their "D&C" either here or abroad. They could track them, but they won't because I believe the people with the real power don't care one way or another. They just use this issue to get fundie votes.

They intimidated doctors by revoking their licenses if they were caught doing abortions. If the pregnancy was early enough, they could perform a D and C procedure, which was legal but could also remove an embryo, with no one the wiser.