While reading this abortion thread, I thought of a question I have had for a while for pro-lifers. Not wanting to derail thread, I thought I would start a new one.
It’s not the standard accusation of hypocrisy, though. I go back and forth on it, but I can see some sort of consistency in a view that abortion should be banned except in cases of rape/incest/whatever. It’s not a view I subscribe to but there you go.
However, a law needs to be both practical as well as ethical, I think. How do those who support an abortion ban with a rape exception plan that it would work? What level of proof would a woman have to have before she would be permitted to have an abortion? Who would determine whether that was sufficient proof? I’d hope that the suggestion isn’t that the police should become the gatekeepers for abortion access.
Clearly the barrier cannot be a successful prosecution for rape - that takes too long. Do the supporters think the cut off is filing a complaint? Or charges being filed? The latter strikes me as completely unfair - if a woman is raped, and the police cannot find the perpetrator, should she be denied abortive services?
So should it be simply saying you have been raped? That kind of destroys the point, wouldn’t you think? If anyone can just say “I’ve been raped” and receive an abortion, my guess is the level of reporting of rape will go up.
I would think, then, the supporters of an abortion ban with a rape exception have to rely on filing a rape complaint. Then we get back to the question of how credible a complaint, and who judges the credibility of it?
Maybe we could use the Dworkin/MacKinnon position - all heterosexual sex is rape. Then, hey presto, the pro-lifers can have their abortion ban and us pro-choicers can have a rape exception.
I guess a doctor could be involved. The problem there is that many rapes don’t include physical signs, and also I am sure many doctors would help people circumvent the law (and a good thing too). I remember how my girlfriend who lived in Dublin was one of the many girls who was prescribed oral contraceptives to “regulate her periods” back when contraception was illegal in Ireland.
Don’t you think that would change, though? The world isn’t static. If you don’t have a credibility factor involved in the report, then what is stopping a person going to the police and saying “There was one night a few months ago I got drunk, left my door unlocked, and went to sleep. I have a strange recollection of waking up with someone on top of me, but assumed it was a dream, so didn’t report it then. Of course, since then I have showered multiple times, and washed the sheets. The only explanation of my current pregnancy is that I was raped that night.” Or multiple other more plausible stories…
Of course, you could charge the people with filing a false police report, but I think you are going to find that charge hard to prove. You’ll also clog up the justice system somewhat foolishly, and, far more importantly, create a disincentive for legitimate victims of rape to file police reports.
A judge could do it, similar to what happens in cases of minors who seek to bypass parental consent requirements. If I’m not mistaken, jurisdictions that have attempted to restrict the availability of abortion to minors by mandating parental consent have been constitutionally required to allow minors the alternative of getting permission from a judge. The judge is tasked with making some sort of evaluation; I don’t know the details, but probably having to do with the minor’s maturity to make the decision.
In cases of a hypothetical rape exception to a more general ban, the law would probably have to specify some standard of credibility against which the judge would have to evaluate the rape claim. There would likely be considerable litigation over what level of credibility could be permissibly established.
Note that filing a false claim of rape (or any other crime) is already illegal, and presumably would continue to be.
It would present an interesting dilemma for the prospective father, when the woman comes to him and says, “you have two choices: you can pay child support for eighteen years, or you can let me charge you with rape.”
Oh multiple objections. Other than the overarching objective of limits on abortion being wrong…
The credibility problem is the big one. Either you accept all police reports, regardless of their credibility, in which case the restriction is meaningless, or you have someone (please God not the plice) sorting through reports on rapes deciding which ones warrant permission to abort.
It’s in her interest to keep things simple and as far removed from physical evidence as possible. Two months earlier, she can claim, though she can’t recall the exact day, she went out clubbing. somebody might have slipped something into her drink - she can’t be sure and she certainly can’t remember. She only sensed a potential problem when she missed her next period and waited a few extra weeks to be sure…
Heck, I can imagine “form reports” being circulated that list the necessary details to include in a police report to satisfy the anti-abortion law, but are vague enough to make a rape investigation impossible, with all other details requested by police met with a curt, simple, unfalsifiable “I don’t remember.” The problem with a law of this type with such a glaring loophole is that it turns otherwise honest people into liars if honesty is now something to be punished.
I wouldn’t say that police reports, and the filing of false ones, is exactly meaningless. Should it come out later that the girl was lying, there’s some unpleasant consequences to it. After all, women like to talk, and who knows who she’ll blab to about her plans to file a false report so she can get the kid hoovered.
But there are a LOT fewer cases of minors seeking abortions and being denied permission by their families than there would be of women seeking abortions. You want judges to make this call, you are going to do some serious harm to the court system.
That’s the question - what level of credibility do the proponents of such a ban/exception want? It’s also interesting that only around a quarter of women surveyed whose experienced met the legal definition of rape actually considered themselves to have been raped. My guess is that number might change under such a system.
You have to remember as well not just that there will be a lot of these for courts to adjudicate, but they are going to have to be done quickly. I think the one think that pro-choice and pro-life people can agree on is that if there is to be an abortion, it is better to be done earlier rather than later.
Yes it is. But if a woman currently goes into a police station and says “I was raped a couple of months ago. I have no idea who did it, there is no physical evidence any more, but I just felt like reporting it,” I highly doubt anything will happen. Would that be sufficient to get permission to abort? If not, are you supporting prosecuting someone who makes such a claim? Prosecuting those who report alleged rapes is going to reduce the number of rapes reported. And it is already an underreported crime.
It would, but filing a complaint doesn’t necessarily mean you have to name a person.
That leads to another question. What if the raped woman is sexually active? Does DNA testing have to be done on the fetus to rule out the possibility it is the product of consensual sex with another partner? Can that partner bring suit to require such testing? To prevent the abortion? What if (as commonly happens) the woman has had both consensual and non-consensual sex with a single partner. If she is pregnant, files a rape complaint, do we then bring in a OB/GYN to estimate the age of the fetus, and determine if the particular act of sex that resulted in conception was willing or forced?
I know. 'Twas an attempt at lightheartedness in an inappropriate thread for it.
For accuracy sake, the closest I have found to it is Katie Mac’s comment “[p]olitically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated.” Feminism Unmodified 82 (1987).
There is also the possibility of having your name published in the local paper as a rape victim. It shouldn’t be a stigma in our society, but it is never the less.
I’m not pro-life, but I would think those who are would react to the “clogging up the court system” issue by saying they’ll cross that bridge when and if they get there. Saving lives is more important than worrying about how busy some judge is.
Compared to being stuck with an unwanted child? I daresay the penalty for filing a false police report (generously assuming a conviction) is relatively trivial. Besides, all it would take is for one woman to be so prosecuted and then have evidence that she was indeed raped to completely undermine the credibility of the entire process, what with a demonstrated chance for revictimizing innnocent women.
This does make me think that there is an element in the pro-life movement that honestly doesn’t care if it becomes less likely that women report real rapes.
I think you’re expecting people to do a level of analysis on the subject beyond what 99% of the people do about their political stances. Besides, which is worse, if you’re pro-life, saving the life of millions of human beings or under-reporting rapes?
Do you know how many abortions are performed in the US each year? Close to 1 million.
