Says Patterico, in criticizing an eye-opening post in which Ampersand argues that many abortion opponents just want to punish women for having sex:
he argues that abortion banswhich protect the mother from any legal consequences are designed topunish women, even though they are expressly designed to protect women from punishment.
This is only correct if prison is the only kind of punishment -- in other words, it's quite far from the truth. Another way to punish women for having sex is to make it impossible to avoid a nine-month pregnancy and childbirth, and then (if they don't make the gut-wrenching decision to give their offspring up for adoption) an incredibly time-consuming 18-year legal obligation that can wreck their educational, marital, and career plans, and subject them to significant social stigma. Giving jail terms to doctors who perform abortions and not to women who have them is a perfectly effective way of punishing women for having sex, since it dramatically increases the cost of an unwanted pregnancy. One could just as easily punish meateaters by banning the sale of cholesterol-lowering drugs, but not their use.
