He Said What?

I know. It was really click bait, but I couldn't just pass by a link that suggested that there was a "Debate Over Jailing Women For Abortions." Really. I checked the calendar. April 2018. Just to be clear, the debate wasn't about jailing women who performed abortions, but rather those who had the abortions themselves. This apparently was a lingering question left over from the 2016 campaign where MSNBC's Chris Matthews inquired after candidate Trump's newly minted opposition to abortion. In that interview, the man who would be "President" said that "there has to be some form of punishment" for those who have one. Women, specifically. It was under some pretty stiff direct questioning by Matthews that the incipient "President" crept toward that eventual conclusion, but he had plenty of time to take a more rational approach. He didn't.
The shame and guilt and physical trauma somehow didn't register as punishment in the "mind" of our "President." A man who has a history of treating women poorly might not be expected to have any kind of truly evolved brain function on the matter, but really: 2016. It was only a few hours before DJ's handlers ratcheted down his rhetoric and made the words that tumbled out of his mouth seem a little less truculent.
Two years before that, very conservative columnist Kevin Williamson suggested his own notion about how this should all go down. Kevin wrote that he felt that women who received abortions should be executed, preferably by hanging. Make an example out of them. Send a message. The message he received back was that his position on the staff of The Atlantic magazine would be terminated. Which just means that he can get more work as a martyred voice of the oppressed and male conservative voice silenced by common sense.
Now back in 2018, Idaho legislator and candidate for his state's office of lieutenant governor has suggested that having an abortion should be a capital crime. “Prosecutions have always been focused on the abortionist,” said Bob Nonini in a statement. “There is no way a woman would go to jail let alone face the death penalty. The statute alone, the threat of prosecution, would dramatically reduce abortion. That is my goal.” Folks in Idaho want to make sure that no one walks away from this mess. Not the doctor, not the patient. Nobody. This is the pro-life movement. And it's not all the people in Idaho. It's the men. And not all men. White men who just happen to wander into politics. And start making laws about things they can't possibly comprehend. So I'm glad I clicked, read and considered. I hope more people, men and women, do so.