Click through for the story about three Hayward County men in jail on charges of castration without malice…….

To answer your question directly, were I the Sheriff, no, I would not arrest someone for performing abortions in a place where it were illegal because I agree – a woman should have control of her own body, and a consenting woman who chooses that course of action is not, in my opinion, doing something wrong. And yeah, the poe-lease are supposed to enforce all laws equally, but every department makes decisions every day on what takes priority, and I would simply not make that a priority. Now, if I found out that someone were a total whack-job who was running a butcher shop but they were the only show in town? I’d have a very hard decision. These guys were running a butcher shop. If the media coverage is to be trusted (the Citizen-Times is usually the best of the corporate sources in Asheville), their tools consisted of a few bloody scalpels in an old coffee can, a desk reference to share between them and a few CD-ROMs. (In related news, Castration for Dummies now ships with a multi-media component.) I would have busted these guys in a heartbeat because that’s a recipe for total disaster. On the other hand, when my paternal grandmother was growing up there was a local mid-wife who could provide abortion services when needed/wanted. She apparently knew how to brew a tea that would induce miscarriages. They were safe and reliable and came from someone who was as close to an OB/GYN as that town was ever going to get. That? I’d have left that alone. I realize it’s a wholly subjective judgement, but in my judgement those situations are qualitatively different.

Also, does the not-getting-surgery-if-somebody-doesn’t-have-a-license thing apply if somebody needs an abortion and it isn’t legal where they are, say in South Dakota? Discuss!

Also, totally. I’d love to see the yellow page ads for that one.

You also spoke of sex reassignment surgery as an apt comparison for voluntary castration vis-a-vis the relative difficulty in getting a medical professional to perform to procedure. SRS requires a lengthy psychological review process that takes up to three years to complete, along with hormone therapy and living day-to-day as the patient’s desired gender, not to mention finding a plastic surgeon willing to do a vaginoplasty on you. You could go to Thailand or Italy to get it done too, but there are still plenty of hoops to jump through there as well. But my point is that there’s a recognized process for getting it done, which simply doesn’t exist for other sorts of extreme body modification such as castration, voluntary amputation, having plastic surgury to make you look like a leopard, etc.

I see their arrest as entirely justified and, in fact, a good thing, if they are guilty, for one of the reasons I want abortion to remain entirely legal: if someone wants this procedure done, I want a licensed, experienced and knowledgeable agent to perform it for them rather than get it done wherever they can.

Unlike abortion, having “castration agents” (which phrase brings to mind all sorts of funny images) isn’t legal. So people do have to get it done wherever they can.