I apologize in advance, because this post has nothing to do with books, classics or otherwise.
But I’ve been watching a lot of Republican candidates for federal office saying a lot of stuff about pregnancy and rape, and pregnancies resulting from rape, over the last several weeks, and I am simply unable to keep my mouth shut any longer. Because as all of my friends know, I’ve been prosecuting rape, child abuse and homicide for over a decade and a half, and this is a subject that I happen to know quite a lot about. And I am deeply disturbed by the personhood movement, by the idea that there should be specified exceptions to a blanket criminalization of abortion, and by the fact that the group of mostly men propounding this policy seem to have absolutely no FREAKING idea what they are actually trying to do here. Since I think that my perspective as a prosecutor might be relevant, I intend to provide it. Read on if you want to hear it. Skip this if you don’t.
First off, I want to talk about an abortion ban that leaves exceptions in place only for instances of rape, incest or life of the mother. The first thing that I want to say about this policy is this: this is a pro-choice position. The proponents can call it whatever the hell they want, but the bottom line is that this position is pro-choice. A person who takes this position is acknowledging that a woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy. What we are actually quibbling about here is who gets to decide when the woman’s reason is good enough. With the classic pro-choice position, the person who gets to decide if the woman’s reason is good enough is the woman. Herself. The rape/incest exception people – their position is that they get to decide if someone else’s (i.e., some other woman’s) reason is good enough. I am pro-her-choice. They are pro-their-choice.
In addition, however, to the extraordinary presumption and paternalism inherent in the position that you – whoever you are – should have more control than the pregnant woman over her reproductive future, is the absolutely, unequivocally impossible enforcement situation that this policy would create. So, we criminalize abortion but leave in place exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. As a policy matter, what does this mean?
Well, it involves me. That is pretty much a certainty, because I am a prosecutor and I prosecute people accused of crimes. So if we find ourselves in a situation where women who get abortions that don’t fall under one of those exceptions have committed a crime, then I’m going to be the one making the decisions about what happens next. That’s my job. And I have to say, I am more than a little bit uncomfortable about being legally mandated to prosecute other women because they have terminated a pregnancy when it is a bunch of non-pregnant people – many of whom are men who can’t even become pregnant – who don’t think her reason was “good enough” to be “legal”.
But, please, enlighten me. How do I decide if prosecution is warranted? And, by the way, how does a woman who qualifies for one of these exceptions go about availing herself of the exception? Are we going to take the pregnant woman’s word for it that she was raped (somehow I suspect that the answer to this question will be “no”)? Is there going to be a form that she has to fill out? Will she be placed under oath? Will there be post-abortion investigations by the police to ensure that she was truthful when she said that she was raped? If we aren’t going to just take her word for it, what will be the mechanism for fact finding we will use?
Will there be some sort of hearing, in a public courtroom, before a judge, where a woman is required to prove that she was raped? How much humiliation will we require the woman to endure during this hearing? Will her attire at the time of the “rape” be relevant? How about her reputation for chastity? Will Rule 412 apply? Will she be subject to cross-examination? Will she have the right to counsel, court appointed if she cannot afford to her own lawyer? Who will represent the interests of the state/fetus? Will it be someone like me, with a similar job title? What will the burden of proof be for the hearing? How will we expedite the hearing so that the abortion can occur within the appropriate time frame, given that there is a window of opportunity that cannot be missed? Will there be an appeal process? Has ANYONE who wants to criminalize abortion while leaving open some exceptions spent even seven seconds considering any of these questions?
But wait, there’s more! What about statutory sex crimes involving children? What if the “woman” is really a child of 11, and the perpetrator is a 35-year-old predator who met her on the internet, groomed her, and then had sex with her? Is it still a rape, even though he didn’t use force to compel compliance? Who gets to decide if the child victim should be permitted to have an abortion? If you are her parent, do you seriously think that some pro-life, conservative Christian judge should be empowered to tell you what is in the best interest of your eleven-year-old, 75 pound, emotionally-ravaged baby girl’s health and welfare? How about some jackass who just happens to be the duly elected Senator from Indiana, but who has absolutely no credentials related to mental health or pediatrics or child development? Where does that guy get the authority to tell you that this pregnancy is what God intended, and that therefore you are going to spend the next eighteen years raising the child of the man who raped your fifth grader while he spends the next quarter century enjoying three hots and a cot courtesy of the taxpayers and the Department of Corrections? And what if your daughter dies in childbirth? Will you be expected to take solace in the fact that, according to the likes of Richard Mourdock, this was all a part of God’s great plan for your family?
Oh, and, what if the rapist denies that it was a rape (rapists do this, sometimes. This may come as a shock. I am sorry to destroy your illusions)? What if I – the prosecutor – determine that there is insufficient evidence to charge the defendant with the crime of rape. Criminal charges require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a really high burden. What if I believe it happened, but I don’t think that I can prove it. Does that mean the woman wasn’t raped for purposes of the rape/incest exception?
This is what happens when we start second-guessing reproductive health decisions being made by pregnant girls and women. We wade into a thicket where, suddenly, lawyers and judges and police officers are making decisions that we are so incredibly ill-equipped to make. Where people like me end up telling pregnant women, “hey, what happened to you wasn’t horrifying enough for ME to allow YOU to terminate this pregnancy. Sorry. But remember, this is all part of God’s plan for you.”
And then, to take it one step further (and I apologize, because I know this is really long and if you haven’t stopped reading by now, you undoubtedly really want to) what happens if there really is a law that declares a cluster of cells moments after the joining of the egg and the sperm a person? What does that mean?
Well, what it potentially means under the law of my state is this: any person who intentionally causes the death of a person under the age of 14 years has committed the crime of aggravated murder. A person is defined as a human being who has been born alive. But if the federal government changes that definition, then well, does that make abortion a potential death penalty offense?
So, personhood for a cluster of cells means that abortion could equal aggravated murder. Really, do Republicans want us prosecuting girls and women for the aggravated homicide of their zygotes? Is that the plan here? Do they actually want to impose the death penalty, or will life in prison be sufficient to satisfy their pathological need to punish women for the crime of being sexually active? Of course, if the woman is guilty, so is the man who facilitates her in procuring an abortion – boys, if you take your girlfriend to Planned Parenthood for an abortion, we’re going to imprison you both for murder. It’s called a “conspiracy.” In case you were wondering.
But if that isn’t their goal, if they would say “of course we don’t want that,” well, then, I have to ask, “what the hell do you want?” Because if you actually believe that a zygote is a person, then how can you demand anything less than justice for the murder victim? Acceptance of less than full accountability means that the zygote has less meaningful protection for its personhood than other persons. And if you can accept this, then it must mean that you don’t actually think it is a person, because we don’t have degrees of personhood in this country. If it is a person, then it absolutely must enjoy the same rights and protections of every other person. So, if you aren’t actually prepared to deal with the consequences that flow from granting it those rights and protections, then you cannot justify calling it a person. Words have power and meaning, and if even you don’t really think it is a person, then what the fuck are we all having this discussion for?
These positions are based upon a certain religious perspective. I have one of those, too. In my world, God is never present at the scene of a rape. And, unless you’ve been raped, you cannot understand what it is like to be raped, and you should shut your effing pie hole about it. You do not tell a pregnant victim to make lemonade out of lemons. Having a daughter who is an unwed mother is not like having a daughter who was raped, nor is it like being a woman who was raped. There is no biological imperative that prevents a woman who was raped from becoming pregnant. And your belief in your God has absolutely nothing to do with my, or anyone else’s, decisions about reproductive health or family size or status.
And all of this chatter and talk is offensive, it is demeaning, it is patronizing, and it is unconscionable. As someone who has worked with rape victims – including some who were pregnant, some who were children, and some who were pregnant children – for over a decade, I would strongly suggest that you all think a little harder about what you really want here and about what you are really proposing. And then, when you’re done with this thinking process that you should have engaged in BEFORE you started shooting your mouths off, please do me the courtesy of leaving me (and the critically important work that I, and people just like me, do every day to advance the causes of justice and public safety in our communities) the HELL out of your overweening compulsion to control the lives and pregnancies of a bunch of girls and women you have never met and will never meet.
And one more thing. Stop with the pandering bullshit about “small government.” Because no person who seeks to require government officials to be involved in litigation over the fertility of the uteruses of all of the women who reside in their jurisdictions can credibly claim to be a proponent of small government.
Thank you, it hardly seems like enough. i came across your article via a facebook post from a friend & i will for sure pass it on! thank you for giving a voice to those of us who have not found ours yet after the trauma.
I cannot in any way articulate my PROFOUND GRATITUDE to you for this amazing post. I am sharing it everywhere I can. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!!! You. Totally. Rock.
Thank you for this real world, practical approach that shows the weaknesses & impossibilities of such proscriptions allegedly based on morality. If politicians really believed that “Thou shalt not kill” should be applied to unborn or nonviable fetuses, they would not carve out exceptions for their voting constituents (the women who were the victims of rape, incest, or in danger of dying if they gave birth). If the goal is to protect the blameless by-product of conception, it shouldn’t matter how that conception occurred. And that is the official Republican party platform position. Your post shows the real-life impossibility of that approach.
And a huge thank you for pointing out the big-government elephant in the room — the Holier-Than-Thou Cloak all these hypocrites wear when they want government to control women’s lives, but not the environment or banking or anything else through which they can make money at others’ expense.
Finally, check out Thomas Friedman’s brilliant, compassionate essay: “Why I Am Pro-Life.” Spoiler alert: it doesn’t come out like you think it’s going to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/friedman-why-i-am-pro-life.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
powerful and well-reasoned. sadly, personhood proponents are immune to reason. they will only respond to public pressure. people who don’t hold such radical views need to get more involved and make more noise. that a presidential candidate who has supported personhood measures can come as close to winning the white house as romney is demonstrates that there is no downside to supporting such radical measures.
I’ve thought on these questions a lot myself, and always wondered how people who wanted criminalization of abortion hadn’t also taken the time to think it through. Thank you so much for this blog post – I am so grateful that someone has put this so succinctly. I’m sharing this every chance I get!
Here is a question for those people. Who is responsible financially for the child who is a product of rape? Will the rapist have to pay monthly to support the child? Or will he, like so many men just claim he does not have the cash? And what about “fathers” rights? Will the poor woman or girl have to allow the rapist to see the child, and therefore have to be exposed to the person who raped her for the rest of her life? Ac onstant reminder of the rape?
I wish I could speak to her and she was my prosecuting attorney for my rape in Michigan!
Christina
How about we make unplanned pregnancy illegal? When a woman is “willing” to reproduce, she signs a document. When birth happens, if there is no pre-pregnancy permission slip, Daddy gets a free vasectomy. No questions asked. Snip, snip.
A question for the author as prosecutor:
What is the legal situation in the following tragic case:
Conjoined twins, both dying, but one can be saved if they are separated – which will certainly cause the immediate death of the other?
I don’t know what the law says about that in your jurisdiction. I do think that a prosecutor who charges a surgeon who performs such an operation is not exercising prosecutorial discretion correctly, regardless of the law. They are incompetent.
The same principle applies to termination of pregnancy where the mother’s life is endangered – regardless of the stage of pregnancy. It’s a horrible moral issue, there are no good answers, but while one might request the mother to be to give up her life for her child, it should not be compelled. Her choice.
But when does a conceptus become an “unborn child”?
I argue that it cannot be at conception. At conception, we don’t know whether the result will be a foetiform teratoma – a type of cancer (though most such aren’t formed this way, some are) – half a person (in the case of two embryos fusing to form one human), – one person (the usual case) – or two people (monozygotic “identical” twins, a clone).
Things get even worse – human embryos have been created by parthenogenesis, with no conception involved.
Pope Pius XI made his 1868 proclamation that personhood begins at conception not based on scripture, but on the new scientific knowledge provided over the previous century by the microscope.
It wasn’t until a century later, starting around 1970, that this became a non-catholic belief too..By that time, the science of biology had moved on. The idea that personhood begins at conception is a relatively new idea, the Southern Baptists not passing a resolution condemning it in 1971.
My position is that a developing foetus becomes an unborn child when it no longer matches the criteria for a fully developed adult – or newborn baby – to be adjudged as legally dead. That means lower than a certain level of neurological activity.
This at least has the virtue of consistency.
This makes for very interesting reading…
http://www.christianethicstoday.com/cetart/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.main&ArtID=406
Thank you so much for writing and sharing this. I am deeply divided on the issue of abortion, since there are certain things I don’t know and I don’t know that anyone CAN know about the subject. But I agree wholeheartedly that it is dangerous, foolish business to legislate things we don’t know about, and haven’t thought through every possible aspect of. Again, thank you for providing your perspective.
also Thank You for the courtesy shown and the honesty that you are troubled over.this as many of us are. too many shrill, cruel and disrespectful things have already been said. The whole issue keeps hideous nightmares fresh for many of us.
Thank you for stating so eloquently ideas that I’ve been trying to get across for nearly 50 years.
Reblogged this on Ms. North Country Liberal.
This makes so much sense. I would like to see education deal with the issue in order to help get decisions made before waiting months and presenting to healthcare workers a baby growing and the horror of aborting at that advanced stage. We need education it is after all 2012. People should not rely on parents to educate.
It doesn’t do any good to educate when over 85 percent of U.S. counties do not have an abortion provider. And I know this comes as a shock, but women have jobs and lives and can’t always get away for the 24-hour notification requirement and the ultrasound and the “counseling” and all that other nonsense and THEN the procedure too. Not to mention it’s expensive, and there are some women with no cars, and some of *those* women live in *rural* areas.
Women don’t present late because we’re stupid. We present late because we have no options.
And sometimes, also shockingly, you just don’t *know*. If your period is really irregular, you’ve never been pregnant before, and you’re really not showing, how would you know? It does happen.
Not sure how it is in the US, but here there are NO miscarriages. Simply put, legally they are ‘spontaneous abortions’. What a shock, particularly if one is unaware that one is pregnant.
That also means, when the lifers here use hospital stats, THOSE are included, too.
.I’ve always considered the best person to make an informed decision about health is that person. The government’s duty is to provide equitable access to all possible treatments..
There are already women in prison and being prosecuted for things like using drugs while pregnant, inadvertently harming their fetus while pregnant, etc. http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges?cat=world&type=article The fact that laws like this are already being applied against pregnant women makes it clear that some of these lawmakers HAVE thought it through. It’s just that they’re so anti-abortion, they’re fine with women’s lives being destroyed if they seek abortion, and they hope that the threat of going to jail will deter other women from seeking abortion.
I’ll never forget arguing with an adult woman (she calls herself pro-life) once. When I pointed out that if abortion is criminalized then many women will die from sepsis and hemorrhage due to unsafe abortions, her response was a blunt, “Good. They deserve to die for killing their babies.”
I believe that that kind of heartlessness is where a lot of these lawmakers are coming from. It’s not that they’re decent people who don’t like abortion and simply haven’t thought about what would really happen if their plans succeed, and if they did think it through, they’d change their plans. It’s that they hate abortion and/or women’s autonomy so much, they really want women to suffer – even die – for seeking either, and prosecution is another tool they can use.
I’ve had two abortions, and I understand how necessary they can be. The direction America is moving in is terrifying.
Fascinating and important perspective from a prosecutor. You are absolutely correct, of course. “Personhood” laws make about as much sense as “fetal pain” laws, which curiously seek to spare a living creature from pain at any cost, and are authored by the same people who would deny terminally ill patients in agony the right to seek medical help in ending their lives comfortably.
If you know or love a woman or girl, this is a must-read. In preparing to share this article, I was trying to find a nice representative quote to attach as a teaser in my comment. But I simply could not find one to single out. The entire piece is packed with powerful arguments that are rarely discussed anywhere in the public discourse on abortion and the insidious rape/incest exceptions, and yet they are the very heart and soul of the entire issue. Really, this piece needs as wide an audience as it can possibly get.
Thank you so much for your well-reasoned, articulate, and compelling piece. The perspective of a prosecutor is one which I had yet to hear, or even think about, but I’m very glad to have been enlightened and am sharing it.
You are right that most “pro-lifers” give no thought to the actual consequences of their positions. From what I’ve seen, they simply don’t accept that the consequences are real. Every woman deciding whether to get an abortion is reduced to a “whore” “using abortion as birth control”.
Again, thanks for writing this.
Beautiful, impassioned and eloquent.
Thank you for posting this. I have been struggling while my neighbors and friends shout out their support for the personhood movement. This post gives me the courage to be more outspoken against it. I especially love your last paragraph about how it’s those rallying for small governments that want the government to enforce this! Thanks again for having the courage to put this out and share!
Yes, yes, this. Well reasoned, well said, I agree so hard it pretty much feels like we must have been separated at birth or something.
Thank you so much for putting into words the thoughts and feelings I have carried since a friend of mine died of a self-induced abortion more than 40 years ago.
Thank you for writing this. Thank you for expanding these ideas and bringing them to their logical conclusions and the questions they provoke. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is a reasoned approach. I love that you conclude by highlighting the paradox of the conservative desire for “small government” and the socially conservative desire for a religious-based perspective on abortion. It underscores that the marriage of these two ideas was made for political gain (to create a coalition); it was not borne of a reasoned argument from common principles.
Again, thank you.
Very well done article. One thing that I would like to read your perspective on is the “window of opportunity” you mention. My own beliefs are understandably not legislatable (for my own pregnancies I considered life as having started once the heart started beating, but that’s quite early) but then how do we draw that line between early enough and too late? The current time-based ones leave far too much room for error, in my opinion, since the date of conception can easily be off by days, even weeks. I read another comment that mentioned using a level of brain activity as the measurement, and that sounds ideal to me but I don’t know how viable it is to measure fetal brain activity in every woman who wants or needs an abortion. Also, I have one possible nitpick. You say, “because we don’t have degrees of personhood in this country.” but previously said, “any person who intentionally causes the death of a person under the age of 14 years has committed the crime of aggravated murder.” It would seem to me that such laws show that we do, indeed, have levels of personhood, and it would not be so difficult to create yet another category or level of personhood for “illegal” abortions. I’m in no way saying this SHOULD be done, only pointing out that by your own example there is a precedence for it. Many laws in this country exist to protect children and those adults who are incapable of protecting themselves. The need for such laws has already been recognized. I personally know some anti-abortion proponents who feel they are merely trying to extend those protections further. Not everyone who is against abortion is a self-righteous hatemonger. (not that you said they were, that is more a reaction to a couple earlier comments)
I don’t base my pro-choice beliefs on when life begins, because life began several hundred million years ago and has continued ever since, and because you can’t make a live thing out of a not-live thing.
I don’t base my beliefs on whether it’s human, because I don’t let born humans use my organs without my consent either.
I base my beliefs on the FACT that *I* and other WOMEN are alive and human, and we own and have the right to control our own bodies, up to and including deciding whether or not to empty our uteruses.
We keep coming back to this and we keep ignoring it. The woman was here first. The woman already has a life that will be destroyed if she dies on some back-alley quack’s operating table. Banning it does not mean no one gets an abortion anymore. Therefore there is no use in banning it because it saves no one’s life and in fact kills twice as many when the woman dies as well as the uterine contents.
That said, I would never force anyone to get an abortion. I would suggest it might be a good idea if the pregnancy and birth will result in a child who must be lied to about its origins and kept from knowing one or both sides of its family. If you can’t bring that child into a healthy situation WITHOUT having to give it up for adoption then it is better for everyone involved if you just don’t. You are not anyone else’s baby-vending machine, and there are plenty of kids out there for them to adopt already.
My stock reply when addressing this issue is this: this is not a matter of being pro-choice or pro-life, it isn’t a matter of when life begins either. This is all about EQUALITY.
When the STATE, not the WOMAN is the entity who decides if, when, and ow many times that woman becomes a mother, than that woman is a second class citizen. Period. End of discussion.
Anyone supporting using Legislative measures to take away the decision making from the woman about her reproductive choices, is supporting OPPRESSION of women.
Wow. Just wow. I know this is a useless comment, but I couldn’t read this and not say how much I admire you for writing this.
Reblogged this on janiswings and commented:
Yes. This. F**k yes.
It wasn’t always thus:
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/30/my-take-when-evangelicals-were-pro-choice/
The bottom line is they’re getting kickbacks from the infant adoption industry, which is faltering due to lack of salable material. And yes, they do see our children that way and yes, it is human trafficking.
If you dig deeply enough into who’s behind the crisis pregnancy centers it is overwhelmingly adoption agencies, adoption advocacy groups and all manner of other entities connected with this industry.
And the Democrats, for their part, stay silent about this even when it is brought up in public conversation because LGBTs might want to adopt and heaven forbid they not be able to throw women and babies under the bus just like straight people do. Meanwhile at least 100,000 children languish in foster care nationwide who *could* be adopted, because their parents’ rights have been terminated… but they’re not perfect or white enough.
Thank you so much.
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You are a gem. Articulate, intelligent and passionate, a true champion for the rights of women and girls.
You rule, okay?
Thank you so much for writing this.
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Thank you for taking a stand against this barbaric mindset. Until women are allowed control over their own bodies, the USA cannot call itself “the land of the free”.
Thank you for your cogent presentation of the facts, the speculations, and the impossibilities of people who cannot think for themselves–and should not be allowed to think for us. Barbara
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Reblogged this on Black History 360*.
thank you for this perspective. I am a reproductive medicine doctor fighting personhood in North Dakota and this gives me some great ammo!!Thanks again.
Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat.Com™ and commented:
Thank you Ms. Christine for this post. Very glad you couldn’t keep quiet any longer. Great post.
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About half of all conceptions never even implant, and get flushed right out; that’s somewhere between 6-7 million per year in the US. These “personhood” amendments illegalize even a failure for an embryo to implant into the uterus; something that happens about half the time, naturally, and cannot be controlled.
Seriously. It’s completely, totally, absolutely nuts. It opens the door to complete and total monitoring and control of every woman’s body at all times. Don’t think this isn’t their ultimate goal, either. The “Personhood” nutjobs are nothing but control freaks obsessed with people (nay, not “people”, just women) having sex.
If you want to reduce abortions, be a strong and vocal advocate for robust access to education and contraception. *THAT* actually works.
Thank you. This is one of the best commentaries I have read on the subject. Well Done
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Articulate, logical argument – the best one I’ve seen yet. I’m fortunate (in my opinion, anyway!) to live in the UK, where abortion laws are much more woman-friendly, so I cannot imagine how awful it must be to be forced into continuing an unwanted pregnancy. I don’t know if you heard about the women in the Republic of Ireland recently, who died of septicaemia after doctors refused to perform an abortion on a unviable foetus (she was already miscarrying)? It’s been all over our news, and has rightly led to calls to reform Ireland’s abortion laws. We can only hope that they see sense. Women deserve better than this.
We heard about it over here! My Facebook page was filled with it when it happened. I am really disgusted over all of this.
I just wanted to let you all know that the God & Neighbor blog (see comment above – it links to her blog) picked this article apart and is trying to refute every point this prosecutor made. I went over to her site and made some comments. She really thinks that women are less worthy than a “fetus” – which she calls a “child”.