I always look forward to Dr. Marty Klein’s Sexual Intelligence newsletters, so I was tickled to see one in my inbox today. But one of the headlines took me by surprise: End Rape & Incest Exceptions to Stupak Abortion Ban. Dr. Klein always has excellent analyses, and this one is no exception.
If you’re against reproductive choice for so-called “moral reasons” (as if anyone getting an abortion or supporting its legality isn’t “moral”), be consistent. If killing a fetus or even a fertilized egg wandering around a woman’s body is the same as killing a person (the position of every anti-choice activist), why should it matter how the fetus or fertilized egg got there? Why is a fetus’ right to live diminished because its father was a rapist or a sadist? After all, we don’t say the children of such men have fewer rights than other children.
And if you take the genetic route and say, “Well, if it’s incest, then there’s potential for genetic diseases..” then you open up the whole genetic testing can of worms and I can see the end result of that, which is genetic screening for all embryos and mandatory abortions for those that have genetic diseases.… a terrible step that leads straight into eugenics.
It’s the same with the whole business of claiming that life is sacred while also supporting capital punishment. Wait, that means that some life is sacred, right? Oh, and war is okay? So only our citizen’s lives are sacred, and maybe our current allies, unless they commit certain crimes? Or they happen to be fathered by a rapist or in an act of incest? Gosh, that’s complicated!
The point is that if abortion is murder in one case, it’s murder in any case, and it cannot be justified. We do not kill the disabled, the old, the sick, the poor, the illegitimate, or those whose parentage might be a result of rape or incest after they are born, so why make any other exceptions IF life begins at conception? We don’t murder children because their parents can’t afford them now, so if one truly believes that life begins as soon as sperm hits egg, then ending every pregnancy is murder, even if it’s your own daughter (or you!0 and it would be a terrible inconvenience/embarrassment/ruin your political/religious career/etc.
I have one and only one good thing to say about Sarah Palin: many people in her position would have quietly arranged for an abortion for her daughter. I don’t know if there was pressure on the girl to do that, but if there wasn’t, then at least the family practices what they preach in that respect. (I would hope that the girl was given a real opportunity to choose for herself, but I seriously doubt that was the case.)
Merry Christmas!