Ohio Republicans Declare Motherhood "Necessary," Want to Make It Mandatory
By Amanda Marcotte, Salon
24 November 18
Ohio Republicans, empowered by the Kavanaugh Supreme Court, move
aggressively toward forcing childbirth on women
While the name of Brett Kavanaugh has fallen out of the headline news cycle,
the religious right has not forgotten that his recent addition to the
Supreme Court now means they likely have five votes to overturn Roe v. Wade
and allow states to ban abortion. While the endless churn of outrageous
Trump stories occupies national headlines, anti-choice activists and
politicians are swiftly moving to pass laws that they clearly hope will
lead, perhaps within a year, to vacating the current legal protections for
abortion rights.
In the stampede to ban abortion, Republican politicians don't always bother
to keep up the pretense that their opposition to abortion is about "life."
All to often, they let slip how much it's rooted in contempt for women
having control over their own bodies and their own futures.
Last week, the Ohio state house passed a bill that would ban abortions at
six weeks. That would effectively a ban on most abortions, since performing
the procedure before a pregnancy shows up on an ultrasound, which happens at
just about six weeks, is not medically recommended. During debate over the
bill in the Ohio state house, Republican state Rep. Christina Hagan brought
her infant twins onto the floor to shame women who aren't mothers about
their alleged selfishness.
"Motherhood isn't easy but it's necessary," Hagan dramatically declared when
arguing for her bill to make motherhood mandatory.
Perhaps we should be grateful to Hagan for using her floor time to unsubtly
suggest that women who have abortions are lazy and selfish. There should be
no doubt that this is the belief that motivates the anti-choice movement in
general, but most abortion foes have become media savvy enough to realize
that they get more sympathy if they ascribe views to a religious delusion
that equates embryonic life to that of actual babies. So at least Hagan
showed her true colors, revealing the resentment of childless women and
desire to exert control over other people's lives that lies at the center of
the anti-choice movement.
Still, this rhetoric is enraging on a couple of levels. First, there's the
deep sexism of assuming that a childless woman has nothing to offer society,
that our value is only in the womb and not in the brain and the heart.
Furthermore, Hagan's insinuation - that forced childbirth is needed to
ensure the continuation of the human race - simply doesn't reflect reality.
The majority - nearly 60 percent - of women who seek abortions are mothers
already. Among the rest, plenty plan to have children in the future, but are
waiting for stability in both their economic and romantic life - because
that's best for the child. Women have abortions because they take motherhood
seriously and believe that it's better for children to be raised in homes
that are ready to accept them.
That's why it shouldn't be controversial to point out that anti-choice views
are rooted in misogyny. These people actively choose to ignore the carefully
collected evidence about women's lives, in order to cling to sexist
stereotypes painting women who have abortions as lazy and slutty. The only
reason to choose ugly stereotypes over facts is because you want to believe
the worst about women.
That, in turn, should explain why, after passing this already egregious
abortion ban, the Ohio legislature is now considering an even more draconian
bill that would reclassify fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses as "persons"
in the criminal code.
This bill received a lot of national attention, because headlines emphasized
that it could make performing or getting an abortion a capital offense.
That's alarming, absolutely, but it barely touches the surface of how
troubling this bill actually is. It could very likely criminalize more than
abortion, putting women in danger of prosecution if they have a miscarriage,
or even use birth control.
The six-week abortion ban is enough to end abortions in Ohio, if that's all
the Ohio Republicans wanted. This bill, on the other hand, would go much
further. By designating an embryo or a fetus a person, the state could open
the door to charging women for child abuse or manslaughter if authorities
believe their personal choices - ranging from using drugs to eating soft
cheeses - were to blame for miscarriage or poor birth outcomes.
This isn't just "Handmaid's Tale" speculation, either. Many states have
already experimented with charging women for child abuse for drug use during
pregnancy. In Montana, women are frequently held captive during pregnancy
for just this reason. Formalizing these efforts by declaring that embryos
are the same as babies could drastically expand these efforts, moving it
past just punishing women for drug and alcohol abuse and towards criminal
investigations for any failure to follow medical advice during pregnancy.
To understand the full scope of how awful this bill is, note that it defines
as "persons" entities that are undetectable by either the woman herself or
by any medical instruments. It takes a number of days for a fertilized egg,
which this bill would declare a "person," to attach to the uterine lining
and start the process of pregnancy. About half of all fertilized eggs fail
to attach, and the woman then experiences a normal period with no way to
know the difference. This bill would render every menstrual period, at least
for women who have sex with men, into a legally ambiguous area, where she
may or may not have a "corpse" of a "person" in her tampon.
It's no mysterious why anti-choice activists think creating this troubling
legal ambiguity is a great idea. For years, the movement has been spreading
pseudo-science about female-controlled birth control methods, such as the
pill or the IUD, claiming that they kill fertilized eggs. (In reality, they
work primarily by preventing fertilization to begin with.) This
pseudo-science gives anti-choice activists an excuse to claim that
female-controlled contraception is a form of "abortion" - as Kavanaugh did
during his confirmation hearing - and thereby lay the groundwork to restrict
contraception access.
Tendering every period a woman has as a maybe-person admittedly creates such
an enormous legal gray area that it's unlikely even Republicans want to go
there. But that's why there's no downside for anti-choice politicians in
introducing this bill. It makes the six-week ban look "moderate" in
comparison. It's unlikely that the birth control pill will ever legally be
considered "murder," but anti-choice activists are using the claim that it
kills fertilized eggs as a pretext for cutting off government and insurance
funding for contraception. The appointment of Scott Lloyd, a lawyer who has
worked to allow pharmacists to deny contraception prescriptions to women, to
work at the Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives in the Department
of Health and Human Services suggests that this new office, created in May,
department, exists mostly to create bureaucratic obstacles for women seeking
contraception.
In Mississippi, a ban on abortion after 15 weeks was struck down by a
district court judge, who pointed out that multiple court decisions,
including at least three from the Supreme Court, have upheld that states
"may not ban abortions prior to viability." Because of decisions like this,
it's believed that Ohio Gov. John Kasich will veto the six-week ban, rather
than commit state resources to defending it through the lengthy appeals
process as lower federal courts strike it down.
Still, if Mississippi chooses to fight that, and if that leads to a real
chance to overturn Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court, there's no telling
how aggressive Republicans might become. Abortion bans that once seemed
blatantly unconstitutional now have a real shot at being upheld. It's likely
just a matter of time before there's a showdown in the Supreme Court over
whether or not abortion rights in the United States will stand.
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