They love the fetus but hate the woman
The pain this is going to cause is just …
As conservative states enacted stringent abortion bans in recent decades, there was one threshold they were loath to cross: Abortion was nearly always allowed in cases of rape or incest.
It was a veneer of acceptance embraced by every GOP president from Reagan to Trump, and even the strongest abortion foes, that a woman should not be required to carry a rapist’s child.
Not anymore.
Just as states may be on the verge of regaining expansive authority to outlaw abortion, eliminating rape and incest exceptions has moved from the fringe to the center of the antiabortion movement.
In 2019, Alabama gained national attention by passing a state law banning all abortions with exceptions only for lethal abnormalities and serious health risks to the patient.
One in an occasional series of stories about the state of abortion as Roe vs. Wade faces its most serious challenge.
There was a brief backlash to Alabama’s law, but over the last four years, 10 states have enacted abortion bans in early pregnancy without rape or incest exceptions: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas. All were blocked by the court, except Texas’ law, which is in effect.
In recent weeks, several other legislatures have been racing to put abortion bans on the books. Arizona’s governor recently signed a 15-week abortion ban without rape or incest exceptions, although it is not yet in effect.
Similar 15-week bans without these exceptions are awaiting the governor’s signature in Florida. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed his state’s version on Friday, though Republicans likely have the votes to override him.
Oklahoma’s Legislature this week approved an almost total ban on abortion except for medical emergencies. It has not yet been signed by the governor.
The Supreme Court this summer will consider the constitutionality of one of those laws — Mississippi’s 15-week ban that excludes exceptions for rape and incest. In doing so, the court will decide whether to undo its 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
If Mississippi’s law is upheld and the court rewrites Roe, the lack of rape and incest exceptions could be replicated in many other conservative states.
The trauma of a rape or incest survivor being forced to bear their attackers child means nothing to them. Who cares about the birthing vessel? They might as well be animals for all they care.
That carries grave physical and psychological implications for sexual abuse survivors who become pregnant, according to Michele Goodwin, a UC Irvine professor who studies law and health and is the founding director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy.
“When there are no exceptions for a person who survived rape or incest, it means the state is coercing that person into a pregnancy they don’t want,” she said. Women and girls who have survived rape or incest have already been through one harm, “but here’s the state rubber-stamping a second harm.”
Her concern is deeply personal. Goodwin says she became pregnant by her father when she was 12 years old after two years of abuse.
Her father took her to a healthcare provider in New York, lied about her age, and got her an abortion. She didn’t need an exception. But as she watches states enact early abortion bans without exceptions, including Texas’ six-week abortion ban, she worries about girls who would have to somehow find abortion access in another state or carry a pregnancy if impregnated by an abuser.
“I tried to put myself in the deepest corners of closets as a child,” she said, recounting one of the ways she tried to escape her abuse as a child. Now she says she is grateful she had the opportunity to get an abortion and pursue an education and career, rather than being forced to carry a child when she was still one herself.
“One of the key steps of being a survivor is to be able to get your freedom back, to be able to get your autonomy back, to be able to get your decision-making back” Goodwin said.
Abortion opponents describe eliminating long-standing rape and incest exceptions as driven by their faith-based belief that life begins at the moment an egg is fertilized by sperm. They say they oppose all abortion, regardless of the circumstances.
“Your humanity doesn’t change with the circumstances of your conception,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, a 16-year-old antiabortion group that has pushed establishment conservative groups to eliminate exceptions. “You are valuable regardless of how you came into existence, or what your father did the night of your conception.”
A zygote, embryo, fetus is not a person. It’s absurd on its face. But a young girl who was raped by her father is a person, obviously. These people are saying that non-sentient bundles of cells are more important than a living breathing fully aware individual human.
Are Americans going to stand for this sophistry?
Here‘s where we are headed:
It was unclear whether Lizelle Herrera was accused of having an abortion or whether she helped someone else get an abortion.
Herrera was arrested on Thursday and remained jailed on Saturday on a $500,000 bond in the Starr county jail in Rio Grande City, on the US-Mexico border, sheriff’s major Carlos Delgado said.
“Herrera was arrested and served with an indictment on the charge of murder after Herrera did then and there intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an individual by self-induced abortion,” Delgado said.
Delgado did not say under which law Herrera had been charged. He said no other information would be released until at least Monday because the case remained under investigation.
Texas law exempts Herrera from a criminal homicide charge for aborting her own pregnancy, University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck said.
Homicide “doesn’t apply to the murder of an unborn child if the conduct charged is ‘conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child’,” Vladeck said.
A 2021 state law that bans abortions in Texas for women who are as early as six weeks pregnant has sharply curtailed the number of abortions in the state. The law leaves enforcement to private citizens who can sue doctors or anyone who helps a woman get an abortion. The woman receiving the abortion is exempted from the law.
Another Texas law prohibits doctors and clinics from prescribing abortion-inducing medications after the seventh week of pregnancy and prohibits delivery of the pills by mail.
However, some states still have laws that criminalize self-induced abortions “and there have been a handful of prosecutions here and there over the years”, Vladeck said, adding: “It is murder in Texas to take steps that terminate a fetus, but when a medical provider does it, it can’t be prosecuted” due to US supreme court rulings upholding the constitutionality of abortion.
Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women also noted the state law exemption.
“What’s a little mysterious in this case is, what crime has this woman been charged with?” Paltrow said. “There is no statute in Texas that, even on its face, authorizes the arrest of a woman for a self-managed abortion.”
Another Texas law prohibits doctors and clinics from prescribing abortion-inducing medications after the seventh week of pregnancy and prohibits delivery of the pills by mail. Medication abortions are not considered self-induced under federal Food and Drug Administration regulations, Vladeck said.