Why Don't We Execute Women Who Abort?

They're just as guilty as Teresa Lewis, if you believe pro-life rhetoric
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 20, 2010 10:45 AM CDT
Why Don't We Execute Women Who Abort?
An undated photo provided by the Virginia Department of Corrections shows Teresa Lewis, 40.   (AP Photo/Virginia Department of Corrections)

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell thinks Teresa Lewis deserves to die because she bought guns for the men who killed her husband and stepson, and left the door unlocked so they could get in. Taking a life by proxy, in McDonnell’s book, is murder. “Yet every day thousands of women do to their fetuses what Lewis did to her stepson,” writes William Saletan on Slate. “What punishment does McDonnell propose for these women? Absolutely nothing.”

McDonnell’s a professed pro-lifer. He authored legislation banning partial birth abortions, and renaming the offense “infanticide.” Yet the law specifically forbids prosecuting the woman who gets the abortion. Obviously McDonnell doesn’t really believe fetuses have the same rights as the rest of us, Saletan concludes. “If he did, he’d hold women responsible for contract hits on their fetuses.” This is clearly an unjust double-standard. “Is killing by proxy a noncrime or a capital offense? Gov. McDonnell, you have three days to sort this out.” (More Teresa Lewis stories.)

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