As Wisconsin had the almost undivided attention of the presidential candidates for the past 10 days, the two leading Republican candidates offered their disturbing and somewhat dangerous positions on a woman’s right to choose an abortion. They may feel that their sharp attacks on abortion will win them votes with the most conservative portions of the Republican base, and they definitely will, but at the same time, they generated some serious questions about how they would implement their abortion policies in the real world.
So if abortion were totally outlawed—with or without exceptions for victims of rape, including incest, and saving the life of the woman—how would that play out? If you outlaw abortion you have to enforce the law and that means that violators must be punished. You can’t enforce a law without sanctions.
Who, exactly, would be punished? Would it be the doctors and other medical professionals who perform the procedure in settings that are currently safe and regulated under the law? Do we want to put doctors in prison for some kind of homicide?
Would the woman seeking an abortion be punished? If so, do you impose a fine or is some jail time warranted? Would a criminal record haunt her long after the procedure? Let’s say she is a 35-year-old married school teacher who has been working in the classroom for the past two years after her youngest child entered school. Does she then lose her job because of her criminal record?
For an 18-year-old student who got drunk and made a mistake, does she end up doing jail time because she couldn’t afford to pay the fine? Would her criminal record then prevent her from getting student loans, as current law allows, so she can’t get an education and will spend her life in a lower paying job?
Could she obtain an abortion in a Canada where it’s legal, but become a criminal once she returns home?
Would her friend, mother or partner who “aided and abetted” with her decision to have an abortion, and may have driven her to the get the procedure, be punished as an accessory to a crime? Would friends and family have to report suspicious “miscarriages” in the same way we encourage crime witnesses to report criminal activities?
|
|
On the other hand, if Republicans were serious about outlawing abortion with no exceptions, then would they have a legal and moral obligation to provide universal and free access to birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies? Then again, some very conservative Republicans believe that some forms of contraceptives actually are methods of abortion, so that would have to be outlawed if they are allowed to get their way.
The Republican Party needs to take a long, serious look at the dangerous game they’re playing with women’s lives and well-being as they pander for votes. As recently as 20 years ago, serious Republican presidential contenders would never have gone to these extremes on abortion to pander to the most far-right portion of their base. The boards of Planned Parenthood affiliates throughout the country were dominated by upper-middle-class and upper-class Republicans, typically women, who volunteered thousands of hours to help provide safe and affordable health care to women.
One final question: How and why did all this change?
