Reading Jed's front page piece on how Akin's abortion position is the GOP party position, I was struck by a commonly repeated idea.
but they also want to force victims of rape or incest to deliver their attacker's child.
I have to say, we're getting suckered by this idea. Because the fact of the matter is, there is no way to ban abortion "Except in the cases of rape or incest." That has always been a canard. I believe that line has always been a cop out by the anti-choicers used to sell their position to people who want to call themselves 'Pro-Life' but don't want to confront what that actually means. It's the
moderate anti-choice position and it's why the number of people calling themselves 'Pro-Life' is so high.
Instead of adopting their language and pretending there is such a thing as a moderate anti-choicer, why don't we ask them exactly how it works? They're going to create an America where you can't legally have an abortion because a fetus is a person with equal rights. Depending on how you got pregnant. Philosophically it's a self-contradictory position. But beyond that it simply doesn't work.
Does a woman going to a safe and legal doctor for an abortion need to bring a note from her rapist? Does she just need to say, "I was raped," and then she can get the abortion? Just check the 'ol RAPE box there on the admission forms. Or would she need the law to vouch for her; would she need the rape to be proven with a conviction? Good luck getting that done in the first trimester. And if your rapist is gone gone, well buck up sister and HAVE HIS BABY.
It's all so ludicrous to try to picture and yet we don't ask them how it works. What is this law they're trying to make? It seems the 'mainstream Pro-Life' position, the one that isn't loony in the eyes of moderate people is this "Except in the cases of rape or incest." But it's no position at all. It's a way for the misogynists to hide the ball and swell the numbers of people who think they're on that side.
So, instead of letting them soft pedal their desire to subjugate women in America, why don't we start asking them how their great plan works? My belief is that what they are pushing is an America where a man can actually have physical control over whether a woman has a baby. A man could reproduce by raping a woman or a girl and the law would force her to carry and deliver his baby into the world. That's the Republican platform. Unless they can explain how this 'exception' actually works in a world that isn't a cartoon.