Pat Robertson, host of the 700 Club, has pronounced Alabama's new abortion law too extreme--the most eloquent testimony, perhaps, proving that its state legislators and governor are around the bend and out of sight. As several commentators have observed, in the scenario where a woman who's been raped procures an abortion, and both doctor and rapist are apprehended and subjected to prosecution for their respective crimes, the former would in Alabama receive a longer prison sentence (up to 99 years). Imagine a rapist who is also an abortion provider deciding to help his victim out of her tight spot--like, maybe the prospect of her making a police report has had the effect of refreshing his gallantry. If his diverse crimes then came to light, the prosecutor, in order to avoid the expense and uncertainties of a criminal trial, might ask whether he'd be interested in pleading guilty to "the lesser offense," thereby avoiding a de facto life sentence for having performed an abortion.
Speaking of abortion and state legislators, Ohio has a guy, John Becker, a Republican from the Cincinnati area, who has introduced a bill that seeks to limit insurance coverage for abortion procedures as well as for drugs or devices that prevent implantation of a fertilized egg, which would include such popular contraceptives as the IUD. Addressing himself to the question of whether his bill would apply to abortions of nonviable fetuses, Becker suggested that ectopic pregnancies, where the fertilized egg implants some place it doesn't belong, usually in a fallopian tube, might be addressed not by an abortion but by "removing the embryo from the fallopian tube and then reinserting it in the uterus so that's defined as not an abortion." The only problem with this work-around is that the described procedure is unknown to medical science. Details, details!
Whenever abortion is in the news, I find myself contemplating the ramifications of the ubiquitous "exceptions" concerning "rape, incest, or life of the mother." To the naked eye, isn't the Venn circle for "incest" entirely within the one for "rape"? I'm saying that consensual incest isn't much of a thing. If precisely three exceptions are required, I think taxonomic overlap could be averted, and realism served, if we spoke instead of rape, life of the mother, and I'm a Republican fat cat who's knocked up my arm candy.
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