America is quickly becoming a scary place for women, as more and more anti-abortion bills that potentially criminalize victims of sexual abuse are being passed through state senates. Yet, many have found something incredibly odd regarding these bills: they seem to be unusually radical, and their wording shows deep ignorance when it comes to the processes involved in pregnancy and abortion, as well as of the overall nuances within the debate.
The states
All in all, seven states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio) have recently passed anti-abortion bills, with several others lining up to follow suit.
Most notably, Alabama just passed what is effectively a blanket ban on abortion with the strictest anti-abortion bill in the United States. The ban makes no exception for cases of either rape or incest, making it a terrifying prospect for victims of sexual abuse. It only allows one exception: when there’s a serious threat to the mother’s health.
For their part, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio advocate so-called “hearbeat bills,” which prohibit abortions after six weeks of pregnancy—which is when, on average, the heart of a fetus begins functioning. Many advocates for women’s rights have pointed out in practice that these bills also represent a near-total ban on abortion, considering most women do not even find out that they’re pregnant until after six weeks have passed.
Louisiana, South Carolina and Missouri are also in the process of passing similar heartbeat laws.
Additionally, dozens of other states have introduced bills that otherwise seek to restrict abortion. According to the Guttmacher Institute, an organization dedicated to reproductive health research and policy, during the first quarter of 2019 alone, at least 28 state legislatures established some sort of abortion ban across the U.S., adding that “the extreme nature of this year’s bills is unprecedented.”
Lawmakers in Texas, for example, debated earlier this year a bill that, if passed, would allow prosecutors to give the death penalty to women who get abortions.
A display of ignorance
The wording in the bills makes it clear that whoever redacted and supported them has a gross misunderstanding of several key issues surrounding abortions and pregnancy—or are at least okay with the misleading information in the documents.
For example, Georgia’s “heartbeat law” gives fetuses full legal recognition by declaring that “unborn children are a class of living, distinct persons.” At best, this is an intellectually dishonest stipulation that jumps to unwarranted conclusions. There are no particularly strong arguments that support that a fetus is a person, even if they are human organisms (remember that person and human are not actually synonyms).
We could go into detail about the staggering number of assumptions, errors, and misunderstandings these anti-abortion bills make, but we have separate articles that deal with many of the issues when it comes to the usual anti-abortion rhetoric. Anti-abortionists usually claim that science has not only proven that “human life” begins at fertilization, but that zygotes, embryos, and fetuses count as persons as well. Both claims are patently false, especially considering science has no purview over the concept of “person”—that is strictly a moral term.
Furthermore, it has been previously pointed out that there’s a moral principle we all accept which implies that even if fetuses are persons, they would still have no right to use a woman’s body against her will—none of us do, for that matter, regardless of whether we’re babies, children, or adults.
The Alabama bill makes similar mistakes, but it gets worse. Eric Johnston, one of the attorneys with the Alabama Pro-Life Coalitions who helped draft Alabama’s anti-abortion bill, claimed in March that “a man and woman can have sex and you can take her straight into a clinic and determine an egg and sperm came together.” This is not even debatable—it is outright false.
Even the most elaborate and sensitive test cannot detect a pregnancy until roughly one week after fertilization—and that is in the best cases. Even though this still leaves plenty of room for the six-week period covered in the bill, Johnston’s claims showcase the underlying issue of having people with a basic misunderstanding of contemporary medicine redacting these laws.
It’s also important to stress that most women don’t even find out they’re pregnant until after six weeks have passed, making the bill exceptionally harsh on the vast majority of people it affects. Whether Republicans actually ignore this or are simply indifferent about it, we can’t tell.
But the rhetorical strategy is clear. Alabama’s ban, as it was introduced, goes as far as to inappropriately compare abortion with the Holocaust, stating that “more than 50 million babies have been aborted in the United States since the Roe decision in 1973, more than three times the number who were killed in German death camps, Chinese purges, Stalin’s gulags, Cambodian killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined.”
It’s worth noting that the 25 Republicans who voted to ban abortion in Alabama are all white men, which explains these levels of outright ignorance on the matter. Many opponents of these bills have pointed out the problem with men taking unilateral decisions to control women’s bodies.
That’s not to say conservative women aren’t in favor of the bills—but even they are mostly opposed to the exclusion of rape and incest as exceptions in the ban. Indeed, according to a 2018 Gallup Poll, 77% of Americans think abortions should be legal in these cases.
Ridiculous implications and consequences
As it stands, Alabama’s bill means that a person accused of performing an abortion would become a Class A felon, which is the highest level in the state. Said doctor would be liable for up to 99 years in prison, even more years than a rapist—a ridiculous outcome if there ever was one.
In addition, while most anti-abortion bills take care to specify that it is the doctor, not the patient, who is at risk of prosecution when an abortion takes place, Georgia’s law doesn’t make this distinction.
According to Jennifer Jordan, a Democratic state senator and a lawyer, “criminal laws we have to outlaw murder, manslaughter, etc. are in place to protect ‘natural persons’, So yes, if [a] woman were to have [a] miscarriage or seek an abortion, she could be prosecuted under any of these. It would be up to [the] discretion of prosecutor.”
Others have pointed out, however, that though HB481 (Georgia’s bill) does not explicitly protect women from prosecution, there are other areas of Georgia’s penal code that do, effectively preventing women who miscarry from being sentenced. However, if a woman does suffer a miscarriage, the bill allows authorities to pull her into an investigation to find out whether it was natural or induced—which could pose a terrible psychological strain on an already vulnerable person and ultimately compromise the mental health of women in that state.
Georgia’s arbitrary classification of fetuses as persons also has some rather strange implications. Georgia would now have to include all fetuses with detectable heartbeats into any “population-based determinations,” as well as qualify them as dependent minors for income tax purposes. No pregnant woman could be deported if the fetus was conceived in the state, of course, since those “minors” would already be protected under the law like any born child would. One wonders whether state authorities will actually be congruent when enforcing these consequences.
The overall strategy
For all their flaws and radicalism, these bills have one clear purpose that undermines any such criticism. They are meant to be harsh. They are meant to be over-the-top in their penalties and assumptions. Republicans explicitly expect them to be challenged. Indeed, their proponents are counting on the lengthy legal battles ahead, as they hope the bills will reach the Supreme Court.
Sponsors of Alabama’s total ban have gone as far as to state it explicitly. Republican state Rep. Terri Collins, for example, said without reservation, “what I’m trying to do here is get this case in front of the Supreme Court so Roe v. Wade can be overturned.”
Alabama state legislators know that not allowing exceptions for rape and incest is almost universally opposed across the nation, even by anti-abortionists. But they think that the lack of exceptions is necessary to get these bills in front of the Supreme Court, where the ensuing legal determination could finally spell the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Though many anti-abortion groups have been trying to fight Roe v. Wade for decades unsuccessfully, 2019 is different. The controversial appointment of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, even amid serious accusations of sexual misconduct, tipped the balance of power in the Supreme Court in favor of anti-abortion. That, and an Administration friendly to the cause, energized many conservative states (and Republicans in general) to take a reinvigorated shot at Roe v. Wade.
A single one of these bills reaching the higher courts would be enough to potentially push it all the way to the Supreme Court—thus fueling this nationwide trend. Though the legal and social battle ahead will be long, and there are many twists and turns Republicans are yet to confront, it’s safe to say that Roe v. Wade advocates are now facing one of their biggest challenges yet.
Take a look at this other article:
Is It Morally Wrong To Have Children Nowadays? Here Are Some Answers
