The death penalty comes to the abortion wars
On Monday, 21 lawmakers in South Carolina proposed a bill that would punish any woman having an abortion with the death penalty. The bill would define as a “person” a woman’s egg that has been fertilized by sperm and apply to “an unborn child at every stage of development from fertilization until birth.”
That wasn’t enough for them, however. The bill goes on to state that enforcement of the law should “be subject to the same presumptions…as would apply to the homicide of a person who had been born alive.” That means they are proposing to treat an abortion as murder, and the woman who has an abortion as a murderer. Incredibly, having proclaimed that a fertilized egg is a “person,” they cite the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and its provision that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” that protection presumably applying South Carolina’s newly created right to life for the fetus.
They finally went there, as the saying goes. The right to life of the fetus now gives the state of South Carolina the right to kill a mother if she aborts one.
They leave an exception for a mother under “threat of imminent death or great bodily injury,” but there is no exception for an abortion performed because a mother has been raped or been the victim of incest with a parent, sibling, or close relative. So, if your father raped you, and you’re carrying your father’s baby – in effect, your own sister – you can be given the death penalty if you abort the resulting fetus.
According to The Hill, “The bill in South Carolina continues a trend of laws in Republican-led states to limit access to abortions and punish it under law after the fall of Roe v. Wade. At least 18 states have imposed near or total abortion bans.”
The South Carolina legislation will provide a roadmap for other states wishing to threaten women with death if they have an abortion. Already in the state of Texas, a man has filed a wrongful death suit against three women for helping his ex-wife get the pills necessary to abort her own fetus last year. He is seeking $1 million in damages.
Already the lack of access to safe abortions in red states is forcing women who want to end a pregnancy to give birth to unwanted children. Which raises the question of what could possibly be next? Will they arrest women seeking abortions who cross state borders and put them in a birthing camp, releasing them only after they have given birth? Will they put surveillance in drug stores to identify women buying home pregnancy tests and then issue warrants against the pregnant women, allowing the state to open their private mail to prevent them from receiving abortion pills through the mail?
They should give Margaret Atwood the Nobel Prize for literature for having alerted us to the dystopian world of the “Handmaid’s Tale” that is no longer in her sharply imagined future but actively upon us. South Carolina is just the first shiver of an earthquake that will strip women not only of the right to abortion, but of other rights as well. Will the laws surrounding consent to the sex act be next, making a conviction for rape harder to prove? The word chattel comes to mind.
Yesterday, several of the original signatories on the bill withdrew their sponsorship, apparently after having read (1) the bill they signed onto, and (2) the tsunami of negative coverage it generated. This doesn’t mean that the belly-slithering chickenshits who pulled their sponsorship won’t vote for the bill if it reaches the House floor. My bet is they will, because who controls women’s bodies in South Carolina, anyway? Women, or white male politicians? I give you one guess.
Having a womb within your body may soon be as dangerous as walking around carrying a bomb.
Recently I saw a French movie made in 2021 which brought back a memory of my junior year, 1962-3, at Colgate University in upstate New York.
The movie is called “Happening”, and it is about a girl who gets pregnant in the 1960’s when abortion was illegal in France, Great Britain, and most of Europe. Ironically, it was freely available to the “enslaved” women behind the Iron Curtain.
The girl, Anne, is an excellent student and has plans to get a university degree and move up in economic/social class. Her having this baby would absolutely put an end to those aspirations. She has nobody but herself to help her, so she resorts to all sorts of primitive methods of abortion, all dangerous. I’ll stop my summary. The movie is very graphic. It can be streamed on HULU or AMC+, or rented or bought everywhere.
I found the film to be a glimpse into the French and American past which is again the American present. As ugly for girls and women as I remember it. I am 80, and I thought those days were finished, but America is regressing, and Womens’ Rights are back to what they were in my long past college days.
The movie brought to my mind how I helped a woman, my landlady, get an illegal abortion in the fall of 1962.
I found a furnished apartment above a garage which was one big room plus bath and closet. I bought a TV (I liked Steve Allen at 10), a stereo, beer (tiny kitchen area) and liquor. The rent was $50 a month, utilities included. I never cooked, as I continued paying for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Beta, or I ate in town. All my laundry was done, as usual, by the cleaners in town. I lived a lot like the way the Navy took care of its officers when at sea or in a Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOQ) on land.
My landlady was single, in her late 30’s, looked sort of fat, and had two young boys; one in high school and the other around 12. She had some sort of office job in town. I would see the boys more than her; we would just meet every now and then as I got in or out of my car. So, I was a bit surprised when she knocked on my door, a first.
What she wanted from me was for me to pay seven months rent in advance, $350. She said she needed it immediately as “time was running out.” She had $300, but needed $650. Somebody had let her down. I told her to borrow against her house, she didn’t own the house, but had a long-term lease, so that option didn’t exist. Actually, that fact made me wary. If she and the kids just left town, I’d lose that money because the owner had no agreement with me. Finally, she told me that she was pregnant and had to have a $650 illegal abortion right away. She said that she could hardly support her boys and herself now; that she would lose her job; that she could only take care of a baby if she stopped working. Then came the tears and, of course, out came my local bank's checkbook. $350 in 1962 is about $2500 in 2023’s dollars.
She cashed my check the next morning, and went somewhere, probably a motel, for the abortion. I saw her a few days later, and she told me she felt okay, and thanked me, again.
You may find this hard to believe, but five years later I again met her oldest son. He was a sailor on the USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14), on which was my squadron, Attack Squadron 52. He had seen me somewhere on this ship of 4500 men, recognized me, tracked me down, and presented himself—-in a restricted area of the ship, accompanied by a Marine guard. I was in the Intelligence room where briefings and planning went on.
The Marine asked for Mr. Hope while the sailor stood outside. I waved him in, and he told me who he was. I asked after his mother. She was fine, and still lived in that house.
I showed him around, and I gave him the same sort of briefing I would give a VIP about our bombing of North Vietnam and Laos. He loved it, smart kid that he obviously was, and understood everything. It was an eye-opener for the Marine, too.
We all shook hands, said good-bye, and I never saw him again.
Were I today to assist any woman to get an abortion, as I had helped my landlady, in “modern-day” Texas, I would be possibly subjected to prison. Texas: Go f yourself. I’d do it again if asked.
So, does a pregnant woman get two votes?