I don’t know if you’ve caught this, but in recent weeks, Republicans have been desperately trying to rebrand abortion rights as something only frivolous people who don’t care about “real issues” are concerned about.
Now, we know that’s ridiculous. We also know that “Ha! Americans don’t care about that, they care about grocery prices!” is an especially awkward pivot in this case, as people forced to have babies they don’t want will obviously be spending more on groceries anyway. That’s just math. I may not have kids, but I do know the money move on “Supermarket Sweep” was always the diaper aisle. Also, what kind of sociopath is like “Gosh, you know, I’d love for people to have bodily autonomy and not be bleeding out from miscarriages in parking lots, but what I’d like even more would be to pay a dollar less for these eggs!” You know, especially when the president is not even in charge of the price of eggs unless you allow price fixing, which the GOP is steadfastly against.
I could go on. And trust, I have!
The other way they’re trying to rebrand abortion as something only frivolous women care about is by pointing out how there are exceptions for rape and the life (and sometimes health) of the mother in many of the states that have outlawed abortion.
Except we already know that the “life and health” exceptions haven’t worked out so well, have they? Thus, it stands to reason — and experts verify this — that very few rape victims are actually getting their abortions.
Before we dive into this, I do want to point out that there is a lot that is gross about the concept of rape exceptions to begin with. I understand that people think what they’re driving home is that it’s especially horrific to force anyone to undergo the trauma of having their rapist’s baby, but the underlying point of them for those who oppose abortion is that forced pregnancy is meant to be a punishment for women who have consensual sex, so it wouldn’t be fair to punish rape victims in that same way.
That being said … they ain’t happening.
Via NPR:
Existing annual data suggests that in many states, the numbers of known abortions performed due to rape are in the single digits or, in some cases, zero.
One reason for that is because in many states, rape victims who want an abortion are required to report their assault to law enforcement. Advocates and medical professionals who work with rape victims say in the aftermath of an attack, there are more immediate issues to consider than abortion laws.
“It’s just too much for them to manage at that point,” says Katy Rasmussen, a nurse who works with assault victims with the Johnson County Sexual Assault Response team in Iowa. The patients she sees are frequently in shock or dealing with the stigma around sexual assault. If alcohol or illegal substances are involved, Rasmussen says, patients may feel shame or even blame themselves.
Or they may fear that the cops will blame them or treat them like they’re the criminals and assume they’re lying, which we know happens.
Experts also cite other factors, like domestic violence, as reasons rape victims may not report — because they don’t want to end up with no place to live.
That’s what happened to Laurie Bertram Roberts. She says she became pregnant years ago after she was raped by someone she lived with. Reporting him and risking his arrest, she says, could have meant losing her housing.
“We shared a residence,” she says. “There was no domestic violence shelter that would take me because my family was too big.” […]
“There’s a perception of good and bad abortions” among people who defend state abortion bans, Bertram Roberts says. “But the truth is the exemptions are all rhetoric and no practical use.”
It’s true. They’re really just there to make the antis feel like they’re not total monsters.
NPR also notes that there were no abortions for any reason in the state of Mississippi last year. Given that it’s unlikely that there were zero rapes in Mississippi, it stands to reason that a lot of rape victims that may have otherwise aborted were forced to go through with their pregnancies anyway.
The only doctors NPR was able to find who had performed abortions for rape and incest victims were those who work for major medical institutions that ostensibly have access to all the legal help they would need if they were to get in trouble for performing an exception abortion.
People think that by saying they oppose abortion but support abortion exceptions they sound reasonable and fair. They think they sound moderate and open to compromise. But the most important lesson of the post-Dobbs era has been that the exceptions do not work the way those people think they are going to work. They are not compatible with reality as we know it, because they require black and white situations in a gray world. They require perfect victims and perfectly clear medical situations, and those are not things that exist in abundance in real life.
A system that only works when everyone and everything is clear and perfect is not a system that works at all.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Your body is the place where you live.
Quite literally, it is you.
If you lose rights over your body, you have lost everything.
Think about the message of a rape exception to an abortion ban--a woman cannot have agency over her body unless she proves that she already had agency over her body violated.