Exceptions
Let's explore that "...in the case of rape or incest, or the patient's life" clause tacked on by moderates
Recently, a hometown friend asked me to elaborate my thoughts on if I thought there could be any fair compromises when it comes to abortion legislation. I don’t think there’s a gray area between restriction and access, and wrote a little bit about it to them, specifically on how timelines are arbitrary and should be decided by the patient and their doctor.
Unsurprisingly, I have Even More Thoughts.
Generally, abortion access is popular with a majority of Americans supporting it. When pressed about scenarios, your moderate pal might say “I wouldn’t get one, but I think we should let it happen in the event of rape or incest, or health reasons.” The issue here, though, is how would those exceptions be enforced?
Sexual assault cases are already underreported and under-prosecuted. Would a victim have to prove that they were “legitimately” assaulter in order to get a needed abortion? Recall a Missouri lawmaker a few years ago insisted the body had ways of shutting down “legitimate rape” which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both the way bodies work and how they can be violated.
If there is an exception for the health of the mother, the burden of proof still falls on the patient. This takes medical decisions out of the hands of the doctor and into hospital boards or other agencies that determine how dire a medical situation is. This has already happened in Texas back in 2016 where the hospital didn’t think an early dilated cervix counted and told the couple to wait for “nature to take its course”, even though their son would be stillborn. In Ireland, the law forbade abortion if a “fetal heartbeat” was present which killed Savita Halappanavar with sepsis. It is cruelty to prevent parents from reducing the suffering of their wanted children (this link is from an ostensibly Blue state, too). This is also another situation where lack of knowledge doom patients, such as the conservatives who seem to think ectopic pregnancies can be reimplanted and aren’t a death sentence (to be clear: you can’t and they are). Look, if we had the technology to move an embryo that implanted in the wrong place, obstetrics would be ahead by leaps and bounds- imagine how that would affect surrogacy and IVF!
Twitter user Alexandra Erin described a concept called The Shirley Exception (alternate link here in case she makes her account private) Surely, there must be a way that [insert personal connection] will be the exception to the rule I’m championing! Surely, my lovely wife will be an exception to deporting all illegals. Surely, the Leopard-Eating-Face Party will only eat the right kind of faces, not my own! Surely, the “good” abortions will be allowed while we punish those slutty women who can’t keep their legs closed. This belief can’t grasp that collateral damage that happens to someone else could happen to them or their loved ones. As with Alexandra in the original thread, I’m not sure what the solution is here. I can’t make you care more about people, especially those you don’t know. For the ghouls who promote anti-abortion legislation, they want their enemies to suffer, as part of rising christofascism.
And therein lies the problem: a lot of the extremist policy making doesn’t want to consider exceptions; it’s a black and white issue to a specific point of view. You either condone murder or you don’t. If you don’t want have kids, don’t have sex, and if you did you need to accept the consequences (a perspective that makes the unborn both an innocent victim but also a punishment to their parent). Or, you’re so worthless you need to give your infant up to a nice, worthy couple who can Save them (which incidentally means occasionally human trafficking which is ironic considering how many championed against trafficking in Fall 2020 without actually doing any of the work… for some reading on what to actually do, here’s an excellent Medium post on it).
Applying an exception to edge cases (which aren’t actually that infrequent) is only an exercise in willfully pretending that abortions aren’t needed as often as they really are, and creates additional barriers that will traumatize what ought to be a safe, mundane medical procedure.