The National Review‘s Kevin Williamson recently wrote that he believes women who have abortions should be executed. He specifically mentioned hanging as the means of execution. I’m not going to get into Williamson’s rhetoric, nor am I going to link to his post (you can look it up.) I’m more interested in how he responded to a few real-life examples of how his idea might play out, as described by RH Reality Check‘s Jodi Jacobson:
In an ongoing Twitter exchange, I asked Williamson if he knew women who had had abortions. He said yes. I asked him if he had told them he thought they should be hanged. No answer. I asked again. No answer. I asked if he would tell the women in his circle who’ve had abortions that he believes they committed homicide. No answer. I asked Williamson if, being consistent and applying the laws he supports to his own family, he would allow his wife to die in a circumstance in which her life were imminently threatened by a pregnancy rather than break his no exceptions rule. He would not answer. I asked if his wife opted for an abortion in a given circumstance, including to save her own life, would he report her to the authorities. Again, no answer. The only reply I got was him calling my line of questioning an “elementary-school trolley problem gambit.”
“Go look it up if you don’t understand,” he added.
In short, he gave no answer when asked to apply his legal proposal to his own family. He refused to take responsibility for the laws and policies he espouses.
Of course, I don’t believe for a second that Williamson thinks anyone he personally knows would ever be subject to his suggested punishment. Either he hasn’t thought it through that far—and refuses to do so now—or he expects anyone in his circle to be above that sort of thing.
What is interesting to me are the ways Williamson, and others like him, choose to deflect the difficult questions. A common tactic I have seen is to dismiss uncomfortable questions by simply calling them “ignorant,” or some similar adjective, and then refusing to discuss the matter further. Here, Williamson cites the “trolley problem,” with liberal helpings of condescension, to dismiss Jacobson. In case you’re unfamiliar with the trolley problem, here’s a version of it:
It’s a lovely day out, and you decide to go for a walk along the trolley tracks that crisscross your town. As you walk, you hear a trolley behind you, and you step away from the tracks. But as the trolley gets closer, you hear the sounds of panic — the five people on board are shouting for help. The trolley’s brakes have gone out, and it’s gathering speed.
You find that you just happen to be standing next to a side track that veers into a sand pit, potentially providing safety for the trolley’s five passengers. All you have to do is pull a hand lever to switch the tracks, and you’ll save the five people. Sounds easy, right? But there’s a problem. Along this offshoot of track leading to the sandpit stands a man who is totally unaware of the trolley’s problem and the action you’re considering. There’s no time to warn him. So by pulling the lever and guiding the trolley to safety, you’ll save the five passengers. But you’ll kill the man. What do you do?
How does the trolley problem relate to abortion, Williamson’s capital punishment suggestion, or Jacobson’s questions? I have no idea, and I don’t think Williamson does, either. I think he is trying, rather desperately, to change the subject. He also, as Jacobson notes in her article, evidences a “deep condescension for women, voters, and anyone who is not (according to his judgment) as smart as himself.” She sums it up quite brilliantly:
Pregnancy, however, is not an elementary school “trolley problem.” It is real life. Pregnancy, labor, delivery, childbirth, child spacing, child-rearing, and feeding, clothing, raising, emotionally investing in, and in all ways caring for children from birth throughout their lives are all real-life issues. Sometimes pregnancy, childbirth, and delivery result in the death or illness of women. These are not theoretical “trolley problems.” They are real. They are practical. They involve tradeoffs. I know this, as I am a mother and a woman who has had an abortion. And I understand that every time a woman faces a pregnancy—intended or unintended, healthy or untenable—she faces a set of circumstances unique to that pregnancy and that moment in her life.
Williamson’s answers therefore reveal exactly the problem with his pseudo-academic approach, and that of the anti-choice movement writ large, to the issues women face in sex, pregnancy, childbirth, and the lifelong commitment to other human beings that is involved in being a parent. He and they are bereft of compassion and understanding for the real circumstances of real women. They lack respect for the intellectual and emotional maturity and responsibility real women take as they make rational decisions about either abortion or childbirth when facing unintended pregnancy. In other words, they do not trust women as moral agents to make choices that are best for them and their families. Anti-choicers like Williamson lack understanding of or just simply deny immutable facts of public health, such as the fact that access to safe abortion care is directly correlated to improved health outcomes for women, infants, and children. He is either unaware of or irresponsibly ignores the fact that in many states in this country women are today being arrested for miscarriage and pregnancy loss on the basis of “suspected abortion.” His answers and his body of work reveal a dangerous mixture of misogyny and disgust for women, a wholesale lack of compassion, an inability to face reality, and complete ignorance of public health, medical, biological, and human rights evidence.
And, tellingly, he is unwilling to apply his own rules to his own family. [Emphasis added.]
