A couple points to follow up Kate's post below:
- Looking at the transcript, Russert does deserve some credit for reading the support for the Human Life Amendment in the GOP platform. If taken seriously, the HLA would not merely ban abortion in all 50 states but make abortion first degree murder in all 50 states. And yet, this view -- not only awful on the merits but exceptionally unpopular -- is rarely mentioned. Democrats, as I suggested earlier today, deserve a lot of the blame for not emphasizing the unpopular GOP positions on the issue.
- On Thompson's comments, though, I would be less charitable than Kate. After all, it's hardly unusual for Republicans to say that women shouldn't be punished for obtaining abortions; indeed, to compound the lunacy the very platform plank that equates abortion with murder would also exempt women entirely from punishment. (The Novak column goes on to assert that no "serious antiabortion legislation ever has included criminal penalties against women who have abortions;" apparently being "serious" means treating women like children.) To take Thompson's position, I think, is not to face up to the fact that criminalization doesn't work, but is simply evidence of someone who doesn't take his alleged "pro-life" premises seriously. (Thompson never said that doctors shouldn't be punished for performing abortions.) Thompson does say something about "young women in extreme situations," which would be more defensible than a blanket exemption from legal sanctions, but he doesn't make clear what he's advocating.
At any rate, I think there's a big difference between recognizing that criminalization is ineffective even on its own terms and simply exempting women from punishment based on whatever combination of pure expedience and 18th century conceptions of women. Thompson seems as incoherent and unprincipled as most Republican anti-choicers to me.
--Scott Lemieux
