This one is making waves due to one of the legislators’ references to “consensual rape,” something for which he apologized later. Doctors who perform abortions will get 15 years, and women who get abortions will not be prosecuted; again, they’re driving abortionists out of state rather than reducing demand. The law does provide tax credits for donations to crisis pregnancy centers but, as I’ve written about elsewhere, crisis pregnancy centers don’t operate in a vacuum. They work by referring women to pro-life doctors, and as such they can’t fill a space that needs to be filled by competent prenatal care. But Missouri ranks 41st out of 50 states for healthcare; it’s notoriously bad for access to healthcare in rural areas. The bill doesn’t address that. As for domestic violence, it’s in the top ten– that is, it was recently ranked as having the seventh highest rate in the nation of gun murders of women by their domestic partners. There’s nothing about that in the bill either. It’s 30th in the nation for poverty, which isn’t nearly as bad as Alabama but no prize. Nothing is being done about that either.
This law also seems to me to be an incentive for women to flee to more lenient states for abortions– and, in fact, the legislators expect that, because there are parts of it that require healthcare providers to provide women with information when they refer them for an abortion out of state. They’re expected to refer them out of state. This is outsourcing abortion, not stopping it.
Neither law will encourage women to flee to abortion clinics in Georgia, at any rate, because Georgia has its own strict abortion ban. In Georgia, abortion will be forbidden after six weeks, except in the case of rape and incest in which case you might be able to get one up until 20 weeks. It does state that pregnant women can declare a fetus as a dependent for tax reasons and request alimony for the baby’s support– two steps in the right direction of you want to decrease the demand for abortion, though in my view it doesn’t go anything like far enough. It doesn’t expand medicaid coverage or anything like that. However, it’s frighteningly ambiguous about WHO would be prosecuted for an abortion– the doctor or the mother. There’s great fear that women who turn to abortion in desperation would go to prison for it– and there is also fear that women who miscarry might be prosecuted if there’s reason to suspect they contributed to the miscarriage deliberately. This isn’t just random scaremongers talking about that possibility– actual district attorneys in Atlanta have specifically expressed their dismay and vowed not to prosecute post-abortive women.
This means two things: first of all, the fears of prosecution are not unfounded, if people whose whole job it is to prosecute crimes say they’re not. Secondly, there’s a possibility that every district attorney in the state who hasn’t pledged not to prosecute women for abortion, or a suspicious miscarriage, just might try to do so– only time will tell. Similar laws in other countries have put women who miscarry in prison, so I see no reason to rule it out. I counted forty-nine district courts in Georgia, and several of those have multiple district attorneys. These are the people who are going to decide which (if any) lost pregnancies are going to be prosecuted as crimes. I keep seeing people say judges will decide, but they won’t; district attorneys will make that call. And we’d better hope that not a single district attorney has any prejudices regarding women of a certain socioeconomic bracket or race. Spoiler alert: we’re talking about Georgia. I’m not saying the other 49 states don’t have their share of bigots as well. I’m just saying, we’re talking about Georgia. They do have a history.
I don’t call any law that puts women who miscarry in danger a pro-life law. I call it a law that’s going to encourage terrified women to stay home from the hospital when they should be treated for a miscarriage. I hope I’m wrong. I also find this whole situation ludicrously unjust when Georgia is ranked 42nd in the nation for prenatal care. That’s putting women in a round room and telling them to stand in the corner or else they might go to prison (but maybe not).
In the middle of all of this, not to be outdone, the state of Texas said “Hold my beer.” Texas is considering a bill that leaves no question as to whether women who get abortions will be prosecuted. They will, at any stage of the pregnancy, and they can be prosecuted for homicide– which, as you surely recall, carries the death penalty in Texas. This bill is still only in the hearing stages and faces significant hurdles, including opposition from some pro-life leaders themselves, but there’s a very real possibility that it might get somewhere. If it does– if a woman in Texas is raped and then seeks an abortion for the resulting pregnancy, then under this law she could be strapped to a gurney and killed for it, but her rapist doesn’t risk the death penalty for getting her into a situation that drove her to that in the first place.
There is nothing pro-life, nor anything rational, about putting women through that level of suffering and danger– let alone doing that while providing them no help to make other choices.
I don’t see anything really supportive of life and human flourishing in any of these bills. I don’t think they’re going to save a whole lot of unborn babies. I don’t think anyone expects them to save unborn babies.
Could it be that they’re being written and enacted for other reasons?
I think so.
And I think this is obvious when you look at the way the legislators themselves are talking about them.
For example, when asked if the Alabama legislation would do anything to save the zygotes being kept in stasis and regularly destroyed at in vitro fertilization clinics, a representative replied: “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not a woman. She’s not pregnant.”
So, the goal of Alabama abortion ban at least was never seen by the legislators as saving zygotes, embryos and fetuses from being killed. It was viewed as exerting control over pregnant women.
The Texas legislator who introduced the most draconian bill, Representative Tony Tinderholt, isn’t shy about his intentions either. He says it’s to “force”women to be “responsible with sex.” He elaborates: “Right now, it’s real easy. Right now, they don’t make it important to be personally responsible because they know that they have a backup of ‘oh, I can just go get an abortion,” he said.
He’s planning on threatening women with a slow agonizing death from a lethal injection, not with an eye toward saving other lives but because he wants them to keep their legs together.
I don’t see anything in these bills and laws that will really reduce the number of abortions; I see plenty that will scare and punish women– and in the case of Georgia’s law, women who might never have had or considered abortions.
I was taught my whole childhood and young adult life that the pro-life movement had nothing to do with controlling women– saying it did was just evil pro-abortion propaganda. I was told that the pro-life movement was “pro-woman, pro-child” and wanted to empower women to make healthy choices for themselves and their children.
I now suspect they weren’t being truthful. Forgive me if that sounds cynical, but to me it’s common sense. Laws are being proposed and passed that won’t save many lives and won’t improve the picture for motherhood in general but will hurt women, and at least some of the legislators aren’t being shy about what they actually want to do. And the pro-life movement is by and large celebrating them as victories.
I support saving lives anywhere I can, womb to tomb. I support anything that would help stop killing. I want with all my heart to create a world where abortion is unnecessary– where women are helped instead of shamed, children are protected, and motherhood is revered. And in the meanwhile I want to reduce abortions as much as I can.
I don’t see this new batch of laws as doing anything like that. I see them as trying to control women.
And that’s something I can’t support.
(image via Pixabay)
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In