The furor over Donald Trump’s comments this week about punishing women who have abortions raised an interesting question. Trump asserted that, if abortion were once again made a crime, women who have abortions should be punished. Trump was simply being logical. It is standard practice under the criminal law that a person who commits a crime, who conspires with others to commit a crime, or who pays others to commit a crime, is guilty of a crime. In simplest form, if X pays Y to kill Z, X is guilty of a crime. Trump was just extending that common-sense rule to the context of abortion.

That pro-choice groups vehemently attacked Trump’s assertion was predictable and understandable, because they are committed to the view that women have a fundamental personal and constitutional right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. What was puzzling, though, is that he was also vehemently attacked by the anti-abortion forces and by members of the Christian Right.

This is puzzling because if abortion is murder of a human life then it logically follows, as Trump suggested, that the woman is guilty of a crime when she is complicit in murdering her unborn child. Why then did the anti-abortion forces attack Trump?

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