There’s a sick, misogynist logic to treating pregnant women like aquariums

Back in 2012, Georgia Rep. Terry England expressed his support for a bill that would ban abortion at 20 weeks even if women have to carry dead fetuses to term. His explanation was that as a farmer he’s delivered calves and piglets when they were dead and it’s heartbreaking but “life gives us many experiences.” The bill passed with an exemption for “medically futile” pregnancies or if they threatened the mother’s life, but no rape or incest exception.

I am not surprised to see Mike Pence express the same view, though without referencing livestock. He wants a federal abortion ban even if the fetus cannot survive. After all, he’s “heard stories” about women who were told there fetus was doomed and then it popped out healthy as anything! “I honestly believe that we got this extraordinary opportunity in the country today to restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law.” Sanctity of life my butt. If Pence wants to tell stories, consider the story of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland who couldn’t abort her miscarriage until the fetus heart stopped beating; the miscarriage turned septic first and she died.

But like the post title says, there’s a sick logic to this thinking. Among the rationales for abortion bans are that they cause fetal pain (though even when it’s a clump of cells that can’t feel pain, the forced-birthers are just as opposed) which is wrong because the fetus is innocent. If fetal pain is wrong, therefore it must be wrong in all cases, even when the mother’s life is at risk. It’s the same logic by which Republicans jump from “covid vaccine mandates are bad” to “all vaccine mandates are bad,” including requiring meningitis vaccinations for school children.

After all, the mother has no rights — she’s just an aquarium holding a valuable fish inside her. Nobody cares about the rights of the aquarium. Certainly not Pence. After all, he’s heard stories where women like Halappanavar turned out fine! His conscience is clear.

In other abortion news, a Nebraska woman bought her daughter abortion meds, which is legal but they slapped her with other charges such as concealing a death. She pled guilty and got a two-year sentence, while the man who helped bury the fetus got probation.

Right-wing pundit Michael Knowles has a rant that reminds us that yes, they want to ban contraception (he must be livid the FDA just approved it over the counter). He recycles the bullshit argument that if we support sex without “consequences” we’re also going to support abortion — ignoring that contraception cuts the abortion rate. Just like other right-to-lifers pretend rape probably won’t get you pregnant. Or they’ll claim it’s all women’s fault because women control how much semen gets in during coitus. And for some of the misogynists, nothing short of the death penalty for women who abort is good enough.

In the words of Alexandra Petri, what Pence, Knowles and their forced-birth brethren are doing “feels unfathomably cruel. Cruel in large ways, taking your body and decades of your life and forcing them in another direction, and cruel in mundane ways, like robbing you of the ability to go for a walk by yourself … Around the country, every day, people are living the nightmare experience of having their lives, their autonomy, taken from them, and then being forced to live those altered lives. Robbed of the most basic control over their bodies, the most basic ability to make decisions for themselves. Robbed of their lives by being robbed of their choices. Now, you can be forced to live out the consequences of someone else’s choices for you, someone who will never meet you or understand what you are sacrificing. Someone for whom this is all theoretical.”

For more about bullshit right-to-life arguments, feel free to check out my Undead Sexist Cliches, available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers. Cover by Kemp Ward