Anti-abortion groups have been busily working to push the envelope of anti-abortion law for decades, and lately they’ve decided to stop pushing and just shred the envelope to pieces instead. For example, Kate Sheppard reports that a Louisiana lawmaker flat out wants to make abortion illegal in his state:
State Rep. John LaBruzzo, a Republican from Metairie, has introduced a bill that would ban all abortions in his state—with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother—and charge women who seek abortions and the doctors who perform those abortions with “feticide.”
Louisiana state law calls for jail sentences of up 15 years, with hard labor, for the unlawful killing an unborn child. LaBruzzo told the New Orleans Times-Picayune that the inclusion of the line subjecting women to “feticide” prosecution for seeking abortions was a “mis-draft,” and including it “would make [the bill] too difficult to pass.” He promised the provision will be removed from the bill before it goes to a committee vote.
There is, of course, no logical reason why women who get abortions shouldn’t be prosecuted for feticide if abortion really is murder. And they probably will be, too, if Roe v. Wade ever gets overturned, as LaBruzzo and his allies hope. After all, LaBruzzo has merely said a little more bluntly what lots of other anti-abortion have previously said more circumspectly: the only reason to exempt women from prosecution is that it would be hard to pass a bill that didn’t. It’s not that they don’t think these women are murderers who ought to be in prison. They do. They just don’t quite have the votes to make that stick yet.
But there’s not much question that this is where they’d like to go. And if Anthony Kennedy ever decides that maybe Roe is bad law after all, at least a few states will end up doing what LaBruzzo wishes he could do right now.
