Roughly half the country apparently believes that abortion = baby murder.**

Pro-choice people (including me): “Oh, yeah, we know that. We disagree. But we understand that they think killing a fetus = killing a baby.”

So, believe it or not, some people think that baby murderers should be punished severely for murdering babies. For instance, if you found out I murdered my infant nephew, you’d probably want me to be punished a certain way. Well, since some people think abortion = baby murder, they want to impose those same punishments on people who have or administer abortions. They share your view of how to punish baby murderers, but not your view of which things count as babies.

A bunch of pro-choice people (not including me): “Holy shit, that is beyond the pale! People like that are monsters! We can’t debate them or even read them!”

I don’t get why people would be surprised by that.

So, hypothesis: They aren’t surprised. They don’t even think it’s a reductio of the pro-life position. (It’s not an absurd implication of their position. Rather, it’s close to a straightforward implication*.) So, in explaining the desire to get Williamson fired, we must posit A) readers are culpably stupid, or B) the readers are feigning outrage in order to eliminate a conservative voice from their magazine.

*Caveat: You might reasonably hold that punishment will fail or make things worse, and so forbear from it for that reason. You might also believe that some women who have abortions are so desperate or under such duress that they qualify for reduced punishment.

Update:
**Gretchen Koch pointed out to me, and I should have said this originally, that many pro-lifers regard abortion as morally wrong but not literally equal to baby murder.