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The thread is about "how are they abuse images if no abuse took place" and the answer is "because they're images of abuse". I haven't claimed they're real at any point.
It's not a thought crime because it's not a thought. Nobody is being charged for thinking about raping children, they're being charged for creating images of children being raped.
If the images are generated and held by a single person, it may as well be a thought crime. If I draw a picture of a man killing an animal, which is an image depicting a heinous crime spawned by my imagination, and I go to prison over this image, I would consider this a crime of incorrect thought. There are no victims, no animals are harmed, but my will spawned an image of a harmed animal. Authorities dictated I am not allowed to imagine this scenario. I am punished for it. I understand that the expression of said thought is what's being punished, but that is very literally the only way to punish a thought to begin with (for now), hence freedom of expression being a protected right.
The reason this is a hard issue to discuss in this context is because the topic at hand is visceral and charged. No one wants to be caught dead defending the rights of a monster, lest they be labeled a monster themselves. I see this as a failure of society to know what to do about people like this, opting instead to throw them into a box and hope they die there. If our justice system wasn't so broken, I might give less of a shit, but as it stands I see this response as shortsighted and inhumane.