This week, Newsweek revealed a riveting profile of Jennie McCormack, the Idaho woman charged with “self-abortion” who is now challenging the state’s abortion laws.  Newsweek called her “the next Roe,” but anti-choice activists aren’t a big fan of that designation.

But when it comes to the reasons she isn’t “the next Roe,” according to them, one really stands out.

The strong implication is that the state is, if not eager to retry McCormick under the 1972 law, at least keeping its powder dry. In fact, the law has rarely been used and McCormack’s case may be the only instance. In any event pro-lifers never ask that women be prosecuted, seeing them as the second victim. [emphasis mine]

They never ask that women be prosecuted?  Who called the police on McCormack?  Why did McCormack’s lawyer have to ask for an injunction to ensure that prosecuters not file charges a second time?  And why is Bei Bei Shuai still in jail? 

Is this how you treat “the second victim?”

After her picture appeared in the paper, McCormack got a part-time job at a dry cleaner, using another name, but people figured out who she was and stopped letting her bag up their clothes, so she quit. On a recent trip to a local state office to apply for aid, she was ignored for hours. “They made it clear what was happening,” she says. “For a while I just sat there, sort of amazed that they were just letting me sit there.” Eventually, she picked up her son and went home.

Despite their claims to the contrary, many in the “pro-life” movement are just as happy to judge punish a woman who aborts as they are a doctor.