A FaceBook news item referred to recent Idaho legislation which stipulates a 20-week limit on abortions. The article pointed to was on ThinkProgress, a liberal/progressive blog, entitled “Idaho Rejects Rape Exception In Abortion Bill Because ‘The Hand Of The Almighty’ Was At Work”.
The article describes yet another example of how religious right legislators were attempting to impose their scripture-based ideas onto the general public, particularly women. I abhor religious zealot’s attempts at influencing any of our laws.
The main thrust of the article was the fact that the law makes no exclusion for cases of rape. It includes this quote:
“The Idaho bill’s House sponsor, state Rep. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, told legislators that the “hand of the Almighty” was at work. “His ways are higher than our ways,” Crane said. “He has the ability to take difficult, tragic, horrific circumstances and then turn them into wonderful examples.”
The article continues:
“The bill does more than compel sexual assault victims to carry pregnancies to term, it makes it a felony to perform such an abortion and allows spouses and relatives to file legal injunctions against physicians who break the ban.”
I don’t agree with the religious claims and I do agree with the article’s stance that “The right to choose is not about the “innocence” or “guilt” of the fetus – or of the woman for that matter. It is about a woman being able to decide whether she is willing and able to carry a pregnancy to term.”
However, I think the real ethical issue presented here is being bypassed due to partisan rhetoric. I don’t think it is necessary, or desirable, to invoke religion to decide ethical dilemmas. Here below is the conversation that I had with several FB users which outlines my feelings:
Bob Millar Screw these stupid men!
Don Rose The almighty is a rapist? I feel like I’m beginning to understand religion a lot better now.
Keith Ostertag
Bob- I must admit that while I heartily despise the religious justification of these fools, I am not sure that I disagree with the bill itself. Why would a rape victim wait five months to have an abortion? How often does that happen? At wha…t point is it not OK to have an abortion regardless of the circumstances? 8 months? One can argue whether 20 weeks is the right limit, but it seems reasonable and desirable to have some limit even in the case of rape. I don’t want to reject reasonable legislation simply because I despise the sponsors (which BTW Dems have accused the Repugs of doing to Obama). So isn’t the real question not the religious rationale but the imposition of an abortion time limit at all for rape victims?
Al Stefanelli @Keith: You asked “Why would a rape victim wait five months to have an abortion?” My question would be “why would it matter?”
Bob Millar Keith – It’s just the latest effort by white men to control women. Men have no right to be involved in these decisions – except to offer women their support or express opinions/values – but NOT to decide or control.
Keith Ostertag Bob and Al- that’s not relevant here. My point is to shift the emphasis away from the sponsors, be they men or religious fanatics, and look at the basic question. Is it reasonable to impose a time limit on performing abortions in the case of rape? The absurd extension of saying NO is to allow murder of the infant at the time of its birth. Do you really think the answer will differ if women exclusively answer the question? Like I said before, the 20 weeks can be argued, but it seems reasonable to me that some time limit be legal.
Al Stefanelli @Keith, you are, of course, entitled to your opinion. It is, indeed, a sticky subject. I will agree to disagree with you, though. 
MaryAnne Erwin If that’s the case, why do we need any laws? If we don’t need any laws, why do we need any lawmakers?
Al Stefanelli @MaryAnne: Who are you addressing? Just asking
Bob Millar I’m for letting the women decide if and when.
MaryAnne Erwin It was a rhetorical question Al.
Al Stefanelli @MaryAnne: Lol, OK, my bad!
Keith Ostertag
@Bob- Yes, you are skirting the issue (no pun intended). We have serious ethical issues which we often avoid by juggling around memes. Yes women should have control of their bodies, but both men and women face the ethical issues together. …To say otherwise would suggest that men have no stake in whether a woman decides to murder her just born child because it was conceived due to rape, which is of course absurd. I think it is irresponsible to dismiss the ethical issue simply by demonizing the sponsors of a bill that attempts to resolve it. Both political parties do this. I reject the religious justifications of the sponsors, but I think it is a ethical issue, as AL says a “sticky subject”, that needs addressing.
Elizabeth Hauth Fields As we go marching full strengh backward!
Bob Millar I’m pro-choice and pro-abortion. The women should decide, in consultation with anyone or no one. the if and when issues.
Elizabeth Hauth Fields Why would a woman wait 5 months? Because while minding her own business, she was brutally deprived of all her dignity and forced to preform an act she had no desire to preform. Then has to prove it wasn’t consensual. She is in denial and has no desire to relive it. That’s why.
Keith Ostertag
OK. That’s seems clear, and on the surface it seems to make sense. But I can’t help thinking that as an absolute it still fails to address the ethical issues. Doesn’t that mean that a woman should be entitled to kill her newborn baby if for any reason it doesn’t appeal to her? Doesn’t it suggest that the mother “owns” her child, so that the mother is entitled to kill her child at say age five or twelve for whatever reason? I’m reminded of the stories of how in the past in Asia couples would often leave their female babies on the hills for wolves to scavenge because females were not valued- a cultural decision. My point is that as a society we need to determine collectively when a life is protected. At the time of conception? 20 weeks? 9 months? 12 years? This is not solely a woman’s decision. This is a difficult but important ethical issue that we need to address. The longer that liberals, progressives, and the left waffle on making these decisions the faster the religious right will make them for us.
Shęldon Hęl I’m sorry, but I’m also against abortion at that late stage, and I’m a big ol’ Liberal gay man from San Francisco. The development of the fetus is just too far along at that stage to call it a medical procedure. The nervous system is well developed, and it’s at the beginning of the viability scale. Here’s what a 16 week fetus looks like: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/imagepages/9573.htm And here’s a 24 week fetus: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/imagepages/9575.htm
Amye Slate You males who would like to make the decision for us regarding abortion, will you kindly open your homes and bank accounts to unwanted children? Oh yes, I would also like to have my say regarding your vasectomies and prostrate surgeries. You already run the whole fucking world; what are you gonna want once you COMPLETELY own and operate women’s bodies?
Shęldon Hęl That’s not relevant, Amye. Whether or not someone has the money to raise a child shouldn’t enter into our discussion of whether or not it’s scientifically ethical to abort at one state or another. And by the way, since I don’t have sex with women, mine is an even less biased opinion than yours.
Amye Slate So money is not relevant? Tell that to anyone who has raised children, Sheldon. Ethics are useless if they do not contribute to reality. As for being unbiased, well…congratulations, I guess?
Keith Ostertag Amye- I am not for men deciding what women do with their bodies. My question to you is- at what point does the decision become a societal one? At what point does it become more than just the woman’s decision about her body? It is not adequate to not answer the question, because if you don’t somebody else will, and that somebody is likely to be the religious right.
Keith Ostertag My wife wants to rephrase my question like this- at what point is it the woman’s body and at what point is it the baby’s body? To take the absolutist view, like Bob, that it is the woman’s body until the moment of birth would mean that men, or any other members of society, have no stake and no say whether it is OK to abort an 8.5 month old fetus- is that OK with you? My point is, we need to collectively decide exactly what point the fetus is a baby, and the proposed legislation saying that it is at 20 weeks does not seem unreasonable to me, despite the ridiculousness of the religious justification that the sponsors use.
Amye Slate
My point is similar to yours, [Keith], in that the question does need some kind of answer. I do not see that as being a realistic outcome, however. Too much strong, willing-to-kill-over-the-issue fervor on all sides of it…for many of our …politicians and their Neanderthal constituents, I’m for retro-aborting THEIR asses! So I cannot reasonably say at what point should we determine that a human life has sparked into human-ness…hell, according to the laws of thernodynamics, matter is neither created nor destroyed, so when is it cosmic dust-and-goo and when exactly is it human life? My long rambling point is that we humans will not likely ever reach agreement on the answer to that question, and it seems to me to be the best bet to leave it up to the woman. We tend to be the most reasonable, nurturing, and least warlike of the genders, and the bodies that carry the dust-and-goo/human ARE ours. We’ve been pretty responsible with our bodies and our children up to now. It’s a decent argument, despite my biased, heterosexual but also never slept with a woman perspective.
Bob Millar
I’m fine with late term abortions, if that’s is the women’s choice. I would prefer earlier decisions – and remove any economic/medical cost reasons to consider abortions – and provide everyone with comprehensive sex education and free birth… control. But no, I wouldn’t restrict the women’s choices starting at some arbitrary number of weeks. And that means, I suppose, that I see neither fertilized eggs nor fetuses as humans that should be used to restrict women. After a birth, we all are in (general) agreement on that.
Keith Ostertag
Amye- Well, I think it is important for us to decide exactly when we consider it dust-and-goo and when it is human life. We can change our minds as we gain better scientific knowledge. The religious rights wants to make it at conception- me…aning all abortion would be illegal. They are now somewhat compromising at 20 weeks. It is clear that our society at this point does not accept birth as the first moment of human life deemed protected by the Constitution. I am arguing that it is not adequate for progressives to simply not answer the question, as you and the article suggest. To simply say “let women decide” obviously isn’t adequate, since it is obvious that many religious right people happen to be women- and they vote very different than you.
Also, this idea that since it is women who become pregnant then it should only be women with any say on the matter seems to me to lead to questionable results. For instance, wouldn’t that mean that only women should be responsible for getting pregnant in the first place, that men should have no responsibility for getting women pregnant? I think the answer to that is no, and my bet is that you would agree. At some point, to be determined by our society, it becomes a societal decision as well.
@Bob- If you don’t want to restrict women’s choices at all, the politically correct approach, then you would have to accept the fact that some women will wait until the last moment to make a decision to have an abortion- are you saying you would be OK with women routinely aborting at 8.5 months? I bet not. Using science to determine at what stage a fetus feels pain is not arbitrary, even if it might not be the best or final solution.
My bigger issue is that not to decide on this and other ethical issues requires constantly being vigilant to make sure the religious right doesn’t sneak in a decision that you will very much dislike. Not just abortion, but stem cell research, justice, and economics. How’s that workin for you?
