Let's say this woman's pregnant. She's got nine kids already and no husband. Her back hurts and the kids's going to be a handful--a deaf and syphilitic womanizer with high chances of dying young. Should she abort? Say yes? Congratulations! You just killed Beethoven!
I'm not quite sure that's how the spiel goes (I threw in the syphilis stuff for fun), but that was my middle-school introduction to the world of the anti-choice. It was never, "The lady's pregnant and she's got a nice husband and the fetus is going to grow into a world leader--and a teetotaler to boot! Oh, and she's going to name him Adolf." Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Forget the hypotheticals.
Last week our dear President Bush, may he die the death of a rag doll, signed into law the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. The act bans intact dilation and extraction, a procedure that involves partially dilating the cervix, removing the fetus feet-first and collapsing the skull to extract it without dilating the cervix further. The vaguely worded bill could extend to other late-term abortion procedures and makes no allowance for the life or safety of the mother because, as the bill's proponents put it, there's no possible situation where maintaining the life of the mother might require a late-term abortion.
I can at least see where the rest of the bill comes from, but such a clause smacks of dangerous self-rightousness, largely because, as a number of obstetricians have pointed out, it isn't true. The writers of this ban have decided that the life of a woman in need of a late-term abortion is worth sacrificing for their cause--and they aren't even willing to acknowledge it. It's stuff like this that makes me fear the government.
Late-term abortion is not a pretty or positive thing. In that respect, the bill isn't an incredibly horrible step in the wrong direction. There are few reasons that a pregnancy, if it's going to be terminated, shouldn't be terminated before the fetus looks a lot like a baby--but late-term abortions also only represent 10 percent of abortions performed in the U.S., making all the brouhaha somewhat less relevant. Late-term abortion (also, notice that the proper term is not "partial birth abortion" --that is a not a medical term, but a sensationalistic one) isn't exactly a plague, and perhaps if women had easier access to abortion early on, it would be less of one.
The problem is the GOP's transparent method of eliminating abortion rights, step by step, starting with the most obviously gruesome. But what's next? Bush, assuming he gets re-elected, will have plenty of time to work on the Supreme Court, justice by justice. Do they overturn Roe v. Wade and ban first-trimester abortion as well? RU-486? Emergency contraception? The Pill? And then what? Watch the abortion death toll continue to mount, only now it's both the women and the fetuses, because they're being done on kitchen tables and in basements, or with coat hangers in the bathroom. Abortion's a reality. Pretending that it isn't, or that a law can make it go away, is like saying there are no medical cases where an abortion might be necessary to save a woman's life. It's not only wrong; it's dangerous.
How can conservatives oppose big government while imposing its big morality onto its citizens? I do not vote Republican; I am not a practicing Christian; I do not think that a woman shouldn't have sex unless she's married and wants a child: stop trying to change that. If you disagree with me, fine, good for you. Have fun holding hands and be careful not to bump each other's blinders. For the rest of the world, pregnancy is a risk of sex and one that we should teach people to reduce. Maybe if we had universally accessible birth control and knew how to use it, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban would serve a moot point--but Bush doesn't want that.
When Bush signed the ban, he expressed hope that it will encourage all Americans to join him in supporting "a culture of life in America." I respect the choice to conceive and carry a child to term--I hope to do it myself someday--but tripling funding for abstinence-only education and chipping away abortion rights sends a message that those conceived and carried children should populate America as prudish automatons participating in a "culture of life," unless, of course, it's the life of a probably black man who's committed a bad crime. Then we cast our gaze toward Bush's training ground, the land of Texas, where his campaign slogan may as well have been "The Death Penalty Rocks!" According to Bush, clumps of fetal cells have the right to grow into a baby, but if that baby grows up into a criminal, its right to life gets waived, and for some reason no one's a hypocrite. Could I at least get some continuity?
So finish your hate mail and damn me to hell (or maybe just purgatory, so I can hang with the aborted fetuses I've failed to defend) (I can't believe I just wrote that). But ask yourself what our government really wants with this "culture of life," and why they want it. Does late-term abortion really keep them up at night, or is it the thought of losing re-election that really gives them the chills?
Meghan Valerio is a Trinity senior. Her column appears every other Monday.
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