Pro-lifers too chickenshit for convictions

Virginia is about to execute Teresa Lewis for hiring hit men to kill her husband and stepson.

Slate's William Saletan wrote Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, asking why a woman should be executed for that, but not the abortion of her own child, especially when Virginia law calls partial-birth abortion "infanticide."

Well, the gov. didn't respond, but plenty of pro-livers e-mailed Saletan, and none of them want to fry a mom. They'll fry a doc for an abortion, but none of them have the courage of their convictions, at bottom line. In fact, the excuses they invent to justify not wanting to punish a woman who aborts her child just as much as they would an abortionist doctor are largely ludicrous. Plenty of respondents claim a mother is "coerced" by either doctor or boyfriend, or whatever.

Right. A mid-30s white collar career woman is "coerced." You lying sacks of shit. You call abortion murder, and a woman deliberately decides to have an abortion, and you are a chickenshit about your own ethics.

Part of me wonders of some of Saletan's respondents, unconsciously at least, don't accept that abortion is at least a bit more complicated than they make it out to be. Others, I'm guessing, have some inner moral recoil at prosecuting a mother. (Hey, read your bible; at one point in the Old Testament, Yahweh tells Israelites to kill even livestock, and in a psalm, they get to rejoice over the idea of babies' heads being bashed on rocks.)

That said, I believe, myself, that abortion is more complicated. And, that's why, post-viability, at around 22 weeks or so, I'm OK with state restrictions of some sort, as I've blogged before. But, even then, we're not charging mothers with felonies, in my book.