Innocent Life

by digby

As the country careens toward a supreme court showdown on Roe vs Wade, I just have to point out that columnists like EJ Dionne are full of shit when they say that most members of the right to life movement care more about a the taking of an innocent life rather than wanting to control a woman’s reproductive systems. They may think that’s what they care about but if that were true 81% of Americans, including many who call themselves “pro-life,” wouldn’t believe that abortion should be legal in case of rape or incest.

I hate to point out the obvious but children who are conceived in rape or incest are just as innocent as those who are conceived because birth control failed. The difference is not in the relative innocence of the children — it’s the “innocence” of the woman. Most people believe that she should not be forced to bear the child of her molester, her relative or her rapist. And I think it’s fair to assume that they think this because they believe that the pregnancy wasn’t her “fault.”

Some people would probably make the argument that having to bear a child in the case of rape or incest is too traumatic for the mother and that is why they shouldn’t have to bear the child. But people talk about giving up children for adoption as if that is somehow easier than the trauma of bearing her child concieved in rape and having to give it up for adoption. For some that might be true. But for others it most definitely is not. Indeed, it can be terribly traumatic to go through a full term pregnancy and then be unable to raise her child for any reason — a child who would be the brother or sister of her other children.

Neither do these people allow that it would be terribly traumatic to have a child while still in high school or after already having had three children in five years or many of the other circumstances that could make a pregnancy unwanted. I don’t buy the trauma argument. I think it’s pretty clear that most “pro-life” people who hold that abortion is ok in the case of rape or incest (all but the 19% who are opposed in all cases) believe this is so because the woman did not consent to sex, which makes her “innocent” too — and therefore she should not be punished as other women are by being forced to go through pregnancy and childbirth and all that goes with that.

They seem to think that sex isn’t a primary biological imperative — meaning that succumbing to the most primitive urge we have is an act which should be punished if it results in what nature intends — pregnancy. It is not a function of bad character. It’s a function of nature. There seem to be few people who are willing to admit that the sex drive is stronger than most people’s willpower from time to time — and therefore unwanted pregnancy will also happen from time to time.

We could take a fair amount of chance out of this equation by simply promoting the use and availability of birth control. The more available and easy it is to obtain the less likely unwanted pregnancy will happen. We could at least educate young people and make it easy for them to get reliable birth control. If pro-lifers really cared about not killing “innocent life” they would have condom machines in school alongside the cokes and candy bars. There is no group of people on earth who are more horny, more impulsive and more likely to think there is no tomorrow than teen-agers. Yet this is the group that the pro-life people most want to punish with early pregnancy if they fail to beat back their natural urges.

But let’s face it. Even if everyone had birth control, unwanted pregnancies would still happen. Nothing is foolproof. As the Republicans remind us incessantly, the only foolproof way to ensure there is no unwanted preganancy is abstinence. That’s the real message of the “pro-life” movement. If women don’t want to endure forced childbirth they shouldn’t have sex. Period.

Jane is asking people to contact Naral and Planned Parenthood to ask them to support Ned Lamont in the Connecticut senate race against Lieberman, whose loyalty to the Gang of 14 Milquetoasts was stronger than his loyalty to women. This is getting very serious now and it’s long past time for the anti-forced childbirth groups to play hardball.

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