“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum” ― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Last week in Missouri, State Senator Doug Beck (D) introduced an amendment that would loosen the state’s almost total ban on abortions to allow rape and incest victims to terminate pregnancies. The GOP establishment was having none of it. Sen. Sandy Crawford (R) offered one reason for their callous indifference to crime victims.
“God is perfect. God does not make mistakes. And for some reason he allows that to happen — bad things happen. I’m not gonna be able to support the amendments because I am very pro-life.”
How she can argue that a perfect God allows "bad things" is beyond my theological comprehension. In addition, the First Amendment relegates Crawford’s God to the observer status in legislative matters. Not that she, or her fellow travelers, care.
Sadly, Crawford is the voice of reason and compassion compared to her Senate colleague Bill Eigel, a candidate in the 2024 Missouri Governor’s race. This mamluke has taken anti-abortion arguments to a height of insanity the notorious Missourian Todd “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down“ Akin never attempted to scale.
In a debate over Beck’s amendment, Eigel offered his logic. First, he dismissed Beck’s work as ineffective at preventing crime — which was never the aim of the pro-victim measure.
“Your amendment doesn't actually do anything to reduce the number of childhood rapes or any rapes or incest occurring.”
This illogic would be like saying the legislature should reject an amendment providing money to treat gunshot victims because it does not reduce the number of gunshot victims.
Then, Eigel goes on to smear the amendment for doing what its author intended it to do.
“All your amendment does is actually ensure that kids getting more abortions than they are today.”
That is the point of the bill — to terminate pregnancies created by crime. To expand the gunshot analogy, it is the same as saying, “All your amendment does is ensure gunshot victims get the treatment they need.”
Eigel next justifies his callousness by referencing a single, controversial, and discredited study — published in a British medical journal 13 years ago — by a woman who has repeatedly testified against pro-choice rights for women. He is not alone. Many rights-denying misogynists have cited Priscilla Coleman to support their bigotry.
Eigel also gets unnervingly weird with reproductive claims that beggar belief.
So my question for you is if, amongst adult women, abortion leads to outcomes that include 35% higher suicide if we open the door for kids to start getting abortions, which is what you want me … a one-year-old could get an abortion under this.
If that's what your intentions … What do you think the suicide rate would be … What do you estimate the suicide rate for children would be if we started subjecting children to the tragedy of abortion in this state? Do you have any idea on that?"
(Bolding mine)
Does Eigel understand how reproduction works? Is he familiar with puberty and the process of sexual maturation? Or is he so fundamentally porn-addled that he believes one-year-old girls can get pregnant?
For the sake of argument, let us assume Eigel does know that small children cannot get pregnant — and his sin is merely distasteful rhetorical excess — we must still regard his suggestion as idiotic. If he had empathy — if he could put himself in the place of a rape/incest victim — he would quickly understand that being forced to carry a rapist’s baby to term is more devastating than being allowed a choice of action.
Even the derogated study he references does not claim that sex-crime victims getting abortions are more likely to commit suicide than sex-crime victims who do not. I am also sure that nothing in Beck’s amendment ‘subjects’ anybody to anything. ‘Choice’ means just that. It is conservatives who insist that people be heteronormative, traditionally gendered, and pregnant.
Eigel leaves no doubt that he would prefer Missourians (at least reproductive-age females) to be handmaids. He adds,
“I can't imagine Missouri will be a better place tomorrow if we have individuals inflicting abortion on kids.”
Rape inflicts pregnancy on kids. Choice gives them options to address the consequences of the crime. How would Eigel feel if Missouri passed a bill denying medical treatment to men who had been grievously injured in an assault because conservative legislators had decided a God who makes no mistakes had, for some reason, allowed that to happen?