As a libertarian, I fully accept the motto that what a woman chooses to do with her own body is her business. As someone who can count, I believe that abortion involves two bodies. That’s what makes it a difficult question.

So what would it mean as a practical legal matter to outlaw abortion? That is a question I have been asked frequently since being fired by the Atlantic over a four-year-old, six-word tweet and accompanying podcast in which I was alleged to have voiced an extremist view on the matter of criminalizing abortion — that it should be punished by hanging.

That isn’t my view at all. But it leaves the question: What should be done?

For some people, even to ask the question brings up dystopian images, from “The Handmaid’s Tale” to the Taliban. To me, a better model than the imaginary Gilead is the real world’s France.