For years, the anti-abortion movement has generally tolerated exceptions in cases of rape or incest, or when the health or life of the woman was at risk from pregnancy. It was seemingly neutral territory in the debate, a recognition of the complexity of real-life circumstances.
But now that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to reverse Roe v. Wade, those exceptions are evaporating. Missouri, like other red states, has a law ready to go into effect as soon as Roe falls that would outlaw abortion from conception, without exceptions for rape or incest — thus promising to revictimize women already traumatized by one of the worst violations imaginable.
And greater danger lurks on the horizon. As The Washington Post reports in an extensive examination of the issue, those health-and-life exceptions around the country are being softened, even as the activists who have Republican lawmakers’ ears increasingly call for ending exceptions altogether. As the primaries and midterms approach, even moderately anti-abortion voters should insist that Republican candidates specify just how far they’re willing to go in restricting those rights — and then consider whether those answers are reasonable.
In hindsight, it is becoming clear that the acceptance in the anti-abortion movement of some exceptions wasn’t a gesture of compassion toward women in impossible circumstances, but was more about legal and political strategy, which might soon be rendered unnecessary by the Supreme Court. Ditto with the nearly ubiquitous reluctance to directly punish pregnant women who seek abortions (as opposed to the doctors who perform them). It took Louisiana lawmakers just days to overcome that reluctance after news of the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, when they briefly considered a bill to charge women who seek abortions with homicide.
While the sponsor ultimately yanked the bill, there’s no reason to believe the idea won’t be back, there and elsewhere. The court could leave states completely unfettered in dealing with abortion. Could America reach a moment in which a woman is raped, impregnated, faces serious health problems from the pregnancy — and then ends up on some state’s death row for ending the pregnancy? Nothing in the court’s draft opinion would prevent it.
Anyone who thinks there aren’t red-state legislators who would accept such a scenario hasn’t been paying attention. In Missouri alone last session, legislators considered a measure from one lawmaker that sought to have the state’s anti-abortion laws stalk Missouri women wherever they might go and censor any information they could obtain about abortion, while another lawmaker pondered the possibility of making abortion punishable by death.
The courts have constrained such fanaticism for the past half-century, but those constraints are very likely about to disappear. Now — before they win reelection — is the time to make Republican politicians provide details about exactly what they intend to do with these vast new powers.
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