Santorum ad goes after Herman Cain on abortion.

The ad uses video from Cain's interview with Piers Morgan, which I've blogged about here, and also this interview with John Stossel. A friend sent me that Stossel interview a couple days ago along with the comment that Cain is an idiot, and my response was:

I don't think he's being idiotic, actually. His position is much like Obama's position on marijuana. Keep it illegal, but don't enforce the law. Let people do what they want, but knowing that the community as a whole has stigmatized it as criminal.

I don't like that use of law, but it's not incomprehensible. Cain states and restates the position clearly. It's just a decision to put the expression of disapproval in the criminal law and then do nothing about the violation.

Same thing as with marijuana possession (in small amounts or whatever the hell the policy is).

It seems to me that Herman Cain would like to take us back to the good/bad old days when abortion was not a right, there were criminal laws, but women got illegal abortions. In Herman Cain's dream scenario, abortions would be available, but no one would be prosecuted. What's the point? The point is, women would know they were doing something criminal, and maybe that would affect their choice, and the people as a polity would be able to express themselves through the criminal law saying that abortion is murder.

Cain's position on abortion, as interpreted by Althouse...
	does a good job of valuing both unborn life and a woman's control over her own body.
	basically preserves access to abortion, with some bad use of criminal law as a smokescreen.
	is basically anti-abortion, leavened with a bit of leniency to account for rape and incest.
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