Iowa Candidate Unable to Decide on Proper Abortion Punishment If Procedure Is Made Illegal

Iowa lieutenant governor candidate has a hard time deciding on just the right sentence for women and doctors if abortion is made illegal.

It’s a question that anti-choice candidates always seem to have the hardest time answering: “What should be the punishment for women or doctors who participate in abortions if it is made illegal?”  For Kim Reynolds, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Iowa, the answer was no easier.

Doug Burns of the Caroll Daily Times Herald reports:

If her stance on abortion prevails, and it is criminalized again, what should the penalty be for a physician who performs an abortion or a woman who has one?

“Well, I think it would be equivalent to murder,” Reynolds said. “I would want to research that before I would lay specifically out what the penalties would be.”

If someone is stabbed to death in front of Pizza Ranch now is the culprit guilty of the same crime as a doctor who performs an abortion?

“No,” she said.

So if it’s a different kind murder then?

“I would want to take a look at that and make sure that I completely walked through that before I would say anything right now,” Reynolds said. “I’m not going to give an answer to that right now without thoroughly looking through that and making sure that I’m looking at both sides.”

If she’s strongly pro-life, why hasn’t Reynolds thought about the punishment component as criminalized abortion is the end game, the logical conclusion, of the pro-life movement?

“I don’t know if it needs to be the death penalty,” she said. “Is that what you’re asking me?”

Should the doctors and women involved in the abortion get a ticket, a fine, or should they be executed?

“I think that we would take a look and make sure that the punishment met the crime,” Reynolds said. “It would depend on the level of crime that was served. I would want to be sure to take a look at that before I gave an off-handed comment to that issue.”

Good to know she thinks it may not need to be the death penalty, at least.