Response to Rob's thread, Abortion as Infanticide

Picking up on Rob’s “How Much Jail Time” thread, in “Abortion as Infanticide,” Jonathan Watson raised some fascinating questions:

“I do think that abortion is infanticide. I cannot see a reasonable legal argument for assigning a different punishment for ending the life of a human being at X point versus Y point” – unless one argues that “the purpose of criminal punishment of this sort is based not on an object external norm (e.g., all killing is wrong, and therefore, killing a fetus warrants the same punishment as killing an infant, child, adult, etc.) but on internal subjective depravity ( e.g., a person should be more emotionally attached to a born infant), and therefore punished for the greater depravity of the act required to kill an infant than kill an unborn.”

Are there resources within CST which suggest “jail time” is not the only way to express the infinite value of life and respect for the dignity of another person?  Within a CST vision, what else is happening within the criminal justice system?  It seems that within that vision there’s much more going on that an “external objective norm” or a judgment about “subjective depravity” – there is also, as Abby Johnson had suggested, concern for both the social context of what gave rise to the crime, and for the potential for rehabilitation and change.  Eg, drug use is a serious evil – but it’s not a given that putting drug addicts in jail is the best way to express society’s outrage, and certainly not the best way to help drug users rehabilitate.  Prostitution is a serious evil – but there’s a whole social context which needs to be taken into account, and there are many examples that the better way to resolve the problem is to work at the roots of the problem.  Before suggesting that abortion should be punished in a way which is identical to infanticide, I think we need a bit more contextual analysis and a much deeper, broader application of the CST vision of criminal law. 

Amy