When Every Pregnant Woman is a Potential Crime Scene

Have you heard of either the Anti Saloon League and the Prohibition Party? They were big players along with the Women's Christian Temperance League in passing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting the production and sale of alcoholic drinks. It took all three organizations about 30 years to succeed to passing the amendment. It was passed in 1920. The amendment was voted out in 1933.

One of the tricks in employed in passing prohibition is the one being used now by anti-abortion operatives. Today, they are attempting to keep women from being prosecuted. This, they think sidesteps a huge political problem, too many arrested voters. Prohibition operatives did the same thing. They did not include drinking alcohol as illegal. The only illegal thing was manufactures and selling. Prohibition and anti abortion had and have identical political strategies. In the case of prohibition the trick did not work. Alcohol was widely available and few who were selling it were caught. Al Capone operated quite openly for seven years bringing beer from Canada and selling to bars in Chicago.

The law enforcement piece of each is different. In prohibition, enforcement was a federal responsibility. A huge amount of federal money was needed to enforce prohibition. It was not forth coming. There was more enforcement in parts of the country where prohibition was most popular, rural areas and the South. Even employees of the federal government need to make choices on where to spend law enforcement dollars and prohibition was not seen as the most important problem of its day.

Anti-abortion enforcement will be up to the states. And, within states counties will have to make choices about which kinds of crimes will be prosecuted. An example of such choices was recent in Montana. Marijuana was illegal in Montana, but some counties elected Sheriffs who made it known they would not enforce the anti-marijuana laws. Along came peyote and goodbye to most drug prohibition.  

There have been several experiments where anti social/religious behaviors were inserted into law. All were unsustainable. Slavery, segregation, gay relationships, trans can be added to prohibition and drugs. All the attempts to control the public's behavior had fatal weaknesses. Anti abortion New York Times columnist Ross Douthat points to the miscarriage/abortion dilemma as a possible fatal flaw in anti abortion.