Editor, Ceres Courier,

Freaking out over something Donald Trump has said or done has become a common everyday experience and most of the time it is rightly so, but the latest freak-out by the pro-life folks and virtually everyone in the GOP including the other two GOP candidates can best be described as a hypocrisy freak-out. Let me explain.

What Trump said about punishing the woman for having an abortion once abortion becomes illegal is exactly what the pro-life folks are saying, only they aren't saying it out loud and in public. In fact, they go through great lengths not to talk about it at all. What they do talk about loudly and in public are the evils of legal abortion, comparing it to murder, the taking of another human life.

Both Cruz and Kasich were quick to condemn Trump for his remarks but both are pro-lifers, as are most in the GOP, in fact Cruz goes one or two steps further, banning abortion regardless of the circumstances. So according to Cruz, if a 12-year-old girl gets molested by her weird, sick uncle or gang-raped by ISIL and she gets pregnant, she must carry the baby to term or face the wrath of the government, headed by Grampa Munster, we presume.

Now think this out for a while: If abortion become illegal and abortion is defined as "murder" as the pro-lifers have defined it, the person performing the illegal abortion can be charged with murder, right? Then the woman seeking the illegal abortion must be charged, at the very least, as an accomplice to said murder, right? Now what about the desperate woman who takes a coat hanger or whatever the self-abortion tool of choice will be (the coat hanger was the tool of choice before abortion became legal). A gross thought but that's how it used to be and apparently that is what the pro-lifers are looking to go back to. So how about this desperate woman, not able to find any other means, takes this terrible, life threatening, path? She can also be charged with murder, right? What is the penalty for murder in most states? Life in prison or execution, right?

Now, how is this different from what Trump suggested? And how is this not a full-blown hypocrisy freak-out? You tell me.

Larry Baca