Ask the average pro-life (anti-choice) voter or activist why they are against a woman’s right to choose and they’ll say it’s for moral or religious reasons. They’ll cite the scientifically dubious claim that “life begins at conception.” And they’ll whole heartedly support legislation to make abortion illegal and punish abortion providers who would provide these necessary services. But what about the woman who actually makes the incredibly difficult to decision to end her pregnancy? Should she be punished? The AtCenterNetwork asked abortion demonstrators this question at a protest in Libertyville, Illinois.

Watch the video.

Amazingly, these activists who would spend their time picketing a women’s health clinic with giant posters of fetuses in an attempt to shame women into carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term seem (mostly) not to have even contemplated this question. And another question that should be posed to them: If a fire broke out in an abortion clinic, and you had a choice between saving 5 fertilized blastulae — conceived “life” by their definition — and a 2 year old child, what choice would you make?

Digby points out the dangerous legal argument that is a logical outgrowth of laws such as this new one in South Dakota. If pro-life activists truly want to have an open debate about abortion, then they need to acknowledge that there will be actually realities to these laws that impact actual people.

…when they use the law to enforce their moral worldview they need to recognize that they can’t have it both ways. If fetuses are human and have the same rights as the women in whom they live, then a woman who has an abortion must logically be subject to the full force of the law. It would be a premeditated act of murder no different than if she hired a hit man to kill her five year old. The law will eventually be able to make no logical moral distinction. Is everybody ready for that?