Imagine losing your pregnancy and being forced to weigh and sex your miscarriage, as well as report it to the police within 12 hours. Imagine, now, that failure to do so would be the criminal equivalent of stalking, arson and statutory rape.
This is not the product of an overactive pro-choice imagination, but the substance of a recently proposed — and swiftly withdrawn — bill in the Virginia legislature that would have compelled that all “products of conception” regardless of gestational age be reported to the police under the penalty of fines and jail time. With countless pregnancies spontaneously aborting within the first few weeks, this bill, if passed, would have made every sexually active Virginia woman a potential outlaw.
Thirty-two years after Roe v. Wade, abortion opponents have become increasingly virulent, eager to promote their so-called “culture of life” at the expense of born, fully-formed women. Indeed, of all the Orwellian phrases coined by the Bush administration, “culture of life” has emerged at the top of the heap.
One would think that with such glistening sentiments at the forefront of White House policy, the United States would be experiencing a renaissance of environmental protection, civil rights, educational standards and peaceful, prudent foreign policy. The GOP continues to warp the discourse so that a handful of polarizing issues overshadow the broader moral challenges of war, poverty, and health care.
The result? In the voting booth, supposed morality trumps domestic policy. Reproductive rights appears to be more controversial than the death of thousands in Iraq and the specter of American soldiers pinned down in an endless quagmire. Moral myopia has gripped America, and the “all-or-nothing” rhetoric of both sides, coupled with the subsequent political pandering, is largely to blame.
Those who identify as pro-choice or as progressive and pro-life were not surprised to learn that abortion rates actually rose under the ostensibly pro-life Bush administration. For these Americans, life does not begin at conception and end at birth. Why, then, does the “pro-life” movement focus solely on the criminalization of abortion, ignoring poverty, health care and scientific sex education?
In addition to fostering hostile socioeconomic conditions, hijacking public health initiatives is another way for conservatives to dole out their “pro-life” plunder. Bush has flat-funded Title X, which subsidizes birth control for poor women. Over-the-counter emergency contraception, which could dramatically slash the number of abortions if made widely available, has yet to be approved by the FDA.
Bush continues to heap money on abstinence-only sex education programs, which ignore the role of contraceptives in preventing pregnancy and STDs. A recent study by Advocates for Youth and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte reveals that teens in America have birth rates eleven times higher and abortion rates eight times higher than that of the Netherlands.
Instead of turning to Europe for a model to improve sexual health, anti-abortion politicians continue appeasing their base with empty rhetoric. Bush, for example, proudly touts a supposed “culture of life” while planning decidedly anti-life policies, such as the implementation of a regressive tax code paired with social spending cuts. Additionally, Bush decries abortion in all cases except for rape and incest. While this certainly appears compassionate, it is ethical gobbledygook — is it life that he is advocating, or government-approved methods of conception? Why does such hypocrisy go over so well with so many?
Sexual politics. This is all it has ever come down to. Fear of the black man and the gay man for their alleged promiscuity. Fear of the French for their supposed effeminacy and sexual decadence. Fear of the “liberals” taking away our favorite phallus substitutes — guns and large automobiles. And finally, fear of women who have abortions, as their wantonness might tear at the moral fabric of American society. They must be forced to pay for their sexuality through the denial of bodily sovereignty.
Of course, there are those with legitimate moral concerns about abortion who should not be tarred with this brush. Reducing the incidence of unwanted pregnancy should serve as the common public health goal for reasonable people on either side of the ideological divide. How ironic that the best way to pursue pro-life policies in the full meaning of the phrase is to abort Bush’s political ambitions in the second term.