What's McCain's abortion position?

MI
Is the imposition of such lenient sentences for doctors & mothers who (respectively) perform & procure abortions an end in itself?

Or are such sentencing provisions merely a way station to a world wherein abortion really is treated like premeditated murder (i.e., a high-level felony, with women who procure abortions being prosecuted for conspiracy to commit murder)?

And if the former, then how do you reconcile such statutes' relegation of the unborn to second-class citizenship with the prolife argument that, because the unborn are "persons" equally-deserving of rights, abortion is therefore morally equivalent to premeditated murder?

That's the thing that gets me, too. There's a bit of a logical inconsistency saying something is the deliberate unlawful killing of people (Aka, murder. That's what murder is defined as, intentionally and unlawfully causing the death of a person.), and thus...the people involved should be fined. Or one of them should be imprisoned and one of them should get off scott free.

If abortion is murder, than the doctors and the women should both be charged with murder (Technically, the woman with murder for hire and the doctor with murder.), and the staff of the abortion clinic and, for example, the person who drove the woman there, should be charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

They're trying to have their cake and eat it too. Society doesn't think of embryos as human beings, and thus won't accept the same penalty for killing them. But pro-outlawing-abortion people think that they can get around that by defining them as human beings...who, somehow, it's nowhere near as bad to kill. So they're 'people', but, you know, not very important ones.

So either there's some serious failure of them to grasp what 'equal protection under the law' means, or this is, indeed, just a first step to having the same penalties as the murder of other people.

"So they're 'people', but, you know, not very important ones." David TC

TR: From a legal perspective age and competence is already dealt with in terms of rights. Ten-year-olds do not have the right to vote, negotiate certain contracts, smoke cigarettes, marry, drop out of school, or take varied jobs. A comatose person is restricted based on their physical/mental situation.

In any case intent and competence is a factor. Many to most abortions occur in cases where the person does not have the intent to kill a human person. This makes them more like manslaughter. Yet I'd be willing to agree it's unlikely such cases would ever be seen as manslaughter because of disagreement. Still I think it can be legally justified as something between "killing an ape" and manslaughter of a child. Religiously it is simply manslaughter or murder if the person has intent. If you desire you can see this as how Jains would consider eating meat to be murder, but even in India the law can't.

"The pro-life cause has largely lost in first world countries, so they're getting more desperate." SR

TR: I'd agree with this if you'd agree that the Pro-Choice cause has also largely lost in first world countries. Most first world nations have legalized abortions, but they do not allow it to be as unrestricted as Roe allows.