There is no question the pro-life position is easier to defend if you dismiss the moral complexity a woman faces from which men are biologically, though not ethically, exempt.
Pro-life lawmakers have long made incredible claims about rape and pregnancy. They have claimed, for example, that a woman’s body has a natural defense against getting pregnant after a rape. One classic example of this view was made in 1988 by Penn. state rep. Stephen Freind:
“The odds that a woman who is raped will get pregnant are “one in millions and millions and millions.”
When women are in trauma, Freind said, their bodies “secrete a certain secretion” that kills sperm.
It’s understandable. These pro-life men cannot be honest about the complexity of a woman’s life without recognizing that she alone is competent to make the decision whether and when to continue a pregnancy.
This week Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona introduced a bill that would ban all abortions after 20 weeks. His argument against a exception for rape?
The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low. But when you make that exception, there’s usually a requirement to report the rape within 48 hours. And in this case that’s impossible because this is in the sixth month of gestation. And that’s what completely negates and vitiates the purpose of such an amendment.
Okay, so let me get this straight. So he is saying that because a woman who is raped cannot know until later whether she is pregnant she should lose all say in what happens to her life as a result of a resulting pregnancy?
How I wish I could sit every pro-life male down and force him to listen to women long enough to realize they live in the complicated and dangerous real world, not in the simplistic landscape he has painted in his own little mind.
Learn more:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/06/trent-franks-abortion-rape-exception
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358404577605292434990750.html