Guy Goes To An Anti-Abortion Rally With A Videocamera

No, it's not the setup for an unfunny joke -- apparently a guy went to an anti-abortion rally in the not-at-all-ironically-named Libertyville, IL (just minutes from my hometown! Vanilla suburbs, represent!), with a video camera and a simple question for the participants: "if abortion were to be made illegal, what should the penalty be for the women who have illegal abortions?"

The resulting video blew my mind a little.



[Update 8/2: Apparently embedding is now "disabled by request." So to see the video you need to click through to the YouTube page]

These are people who have been working for years to outlaw abortion, and they haven't given a single thought to the consequences for the women who would be made criminals if their wishes were fulfilled. To be honest, this question hadn't crossed my mind, either (though I'm not the one calling for the criminalization of thousands of women), so when I watched the video I had one of those moments of clarity that come so rarely. The national "debate" (it's hard to call it that considering how little actual back-and-forth goes on) over abortion has been raging for nearly my entire life, and never before had I heard this question asked.

Anna Quindlen has a piece in Newsweek talking about this video, as well as an upcoming campaign by The National Institute for Reproductive Health that asks the same question that the Libertyville filmmaker asked:

Lawmakers in a number of states have already passed or are considering statutes designed to outlaw abortion if Roe is overturned. But almost none hold the woman, the person who set the so-called crime in motion, accountable. Is the message that women are not to be held responsible for their actions? Or is it merely that those writing the laws understand that if women were going to jail, the vast majority of Americans would violently object?

[...]

Nearly 20 years ago, in a presidential debate, George Bush the elder was asked this very question, whether in making abortion illegal he would punish the woman who had one. "I haven't sorted out the penalties," he said lamely. Neither, it turns out, has anyone else. But there are only two logical choices: hold women accountable for a criminal act by sending them to prison, or refuse to criminalize the act in the first place. If you can't countenance the first, you have to accept the second. You can't have it both ways."

Looking at the faces of the people in the Libertyville video, I almost get the sense they might be thinking about what they're saying and doing, instead of just blindly doing what they think is right in the name of religion or belief or whatever. Almost. Still, you can't re-think a position you've never thought about in the first place, and if this simple question gets people thinking about what they believe in, and what those beliefs mean, that can only be good.

(Hat tip to Feministing, who posted about this yesterday, and Feministe, who followed up with some questions of her own.)

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Listening to: Hank Williams - I Saw the Light
via FoxyTunes