If you're pro-life, how far do you take that?

[Catholic_Lady]

Depends.

If abortion became illegal tomorrow, the first step to enforcing it would be to very mildly prosecute the doctor who killed the unborn baby. Maybe pay a fine, or get his license to practice revoked for a time, etc.

Why such a "small" penalty for killing a human being? Because unfortunately we, as a society, are not at the stage yet where we fully see unborn humans as actual humans, deserving of the right to life just like all other humans. Making abortion illegal is a first step, but isn't, in and of itself, going to change people's hearts. Coming to that change of heart, that understanding and acceptance, takes time. It is a process towards building a culture of life and towards seeing ALL humans as having the inherent right to live, regardless of religion, race, sex, orientation, or age.

A doctor who performs an abortion isn't necessarily a bad person, because he probably hasn't reached the stage yet where he views an unborn human as the human being that he/she truly is. Therefore his culpability is greatly lessened, and so too, must his punishment.

In the future though, once it is fully understood and fully accepted that unborn humans are humans who deserve the right to life just like all other humans, the penalty should increase proportionally to that understanding.. as at that point it would take a truly evil person to kill an unborn baby, no differently from how it takes a truly evil person to kill a baby who was just born.

But right now, we are not at that point yet, and there are plenty of well meaning people doing abortions.

(With that being said, the mother herself should never be prosecuted. Only the abortionist. Again, due to a matter of culpability and taking into account the vulnerable and desperate position a woman is in when she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. In that sense, she is also a victim.)

Thanks for your answer

This leads to the question of pragmatism versus idealism. Let's assume for the sake of argument that implementing a system of punishing doctors wouldn't reduce the number of abortions that actually happen, but would instead cause more dangerous backstreet/self administered abortions. Would you still go ahead following the ideal, even though the outcome would be worse?

So your hypothetical scenario is, what if there would be MORE abortions overall if abortion became illegal?

That doesn't make much sense, but out of principle, direct killing of an innocent human should never be legally permissable. By the same token, I assume if legalizing rape decreased the instance of rape, most people would still say rape should be illegal.

Because the right to life is an inherent right, just as the right to not be sexually violated is an inherent right, those human rights should always (even if purely by principle) be protected by the law.