No pregnant woman should be forced to have an abortion. All reasonable people can agree on that. But drawing the line between coercion and consent is more difficult than it may seem.
Is a woman coerced if she terminates a pregnancy rather than tells a partner who previously has abused her that he is — or is not — the father?
Is she coerced if caring and providing for the children she has means that she can’t afford to miss work to give birth and care for a newborn?
What if a man impregnates a woman and then says he won’t help rear the child? Is that coercion?
Yes, yes and yes, according to the Missouri House of Representatives.
This week, the House approved a bill that supposedly is aimed at coercion in connection with abortions. In fact, however, the bill is overly broad and overly vague. Its constitutionality would be highly suspect if enacted. Its provisions wander far beyond relatively clear-cut cases of coercion. And it would be almost impossible to enforce.
For example, under this bill, a man would be guilty of coercion if he urged his partner to have an abortion, even if it turned out that she were not pregnant and never got the procedure. A business that threatened to fire a pregnant employee could be guilty of coercion. It also could be guilty if it threatened to cut the pay or change the benefits of the pregnant employee.
Schools and civic organizations couldn’t threaten or revoke the scholarships of pregnant students without risking prosecution for coercion. Terminating a pregnancy that resulted from a rape could be considered coercion as well, and doctors could be charged with a felony if they performed such a procedure.
The bottom line is that House Bill 1831, sponsored by Rep. Bob Onder, R-Lake St. Louis, would do more to limit women’s rights than protect them.
To be sure, the bill contains a number of problematic provisions. Among many: It would create new burdens that would make it especially difficult for women to get abortions if they live outside of urban areas. It would require doctors to offer an experimental anesthesia that may put some women at risk. And it would mandate signs posted in abortion clinics making false promises of state assistance to women if they continue their pregnancies all the way to term.
Its worst feature, by far, is the creation of the new crime of coercion. Enforcement would be impossible. How could police and prosecutors establish beyond a reasonable doubt what has transpired between two people speaking in private? How would they separate false claims of coercion — say, a poorly performing employee who misses work but claims she was fired for refusing to have an abortion — from legitimate ones, such as those of a battered wife?
Parents and guardians of children and people with mental disabilities, meanwhile, usually make medical decisions on their behalf. This bill would make it possible to prosecute them for coercion, even for consenting to an abortion that was medically necessary.
H.B. 1831 is unconstitutional, unrealistic and unnecessary. The Senate should refuse to play along.
And a Charlotte Bronte quote for Steve Rupp: “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.”
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Nick, I did not state that a legislator should have an abortion to be entitled to propose a law, nor would I define myself as either pro-life or pro-choice. Can you reference the college in Missouri that’s cutting scholarships to pregnant women? I’d be interested in reviewing and commenting on that particular case.
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Kristy – You can resent it all you want, the bill wouldn’t prohibit a single abortion. It simply makes it illegal to blackmail or coerce a woman into having an abortion – something every woman should support. If you were a high school senior and got pregnant, and didn’t want to get an abortion, would it be acceptable for your college scholarship to be canceled? A woman’s right to choose cuts both ways: Those who choose not to have an abortion should be protected just as much as those who choose to have one.
PS – Your statement that no legislator who hasn’t had an abortion should be entitled to propose any law pertaining to abortion is absurd. Legislators, by necessity, pass laws on all sorts of things on which they have no personal experience. Would you say that the only ones who should be able to pass laws against drunk driving should be those who have driven drunk? Or that the only victims of domestic violence ought to be able to pass laws against it?
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Abortion is looked at as a political football. Instead, it should be looked at only for what it is- a medical procedure that removes a small , usually dead, human being from a mothers womb. We can dance around all day long and refer to “women’s rights’ or “privacy rights” or “constitutional rights” or “coersion” or any of hundreds of arguments about abortion. After all the rhetoric, only one fact remains: A small child is dead .And it’s usually done for convenience. And abortion proponents don’t like to hear that. They don’t like to be held to the real truth about what an abortion is. They recoil when someone mentions “Values, or morals.” Author and Retired Army Colonel, Jeff O’Leary, said it well, “Virtue threatens and angers those whose own lives have been lived under the shadows of expediency and vice.” OUCH!
Steve Rupp
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I’m always struck by what I\’ve called the “absurd divide” that exists between the topic of abortion as it exists in our culture (and in our laws) versus the actual experience of abortion. Having experienced abortion firsthand, I can relay that it was physiologically and emotionally the most traumatic thing I\’ve ever experienced. And it was a long time before I could reconcile my experience of abortion, which was horrifying, with my belief that it was necessary. Defining coercion as it relates to abortion is intellectual ether; it’s not the stuff from which good laws are made. For instance, at what point does my honest assessment of the experience of abortion become a scare tactic to prevent someone else from making the same choice? In our present culture, there is no place for the truth of my experience. And until Bill Odner can talk frankly about his own experience with abortion (and he certainly can’t talk about the experience of having had one himself), I resent Bill 1831.
I blogged about popular cultures infatuation with unplanned pregnancy in an editorial review of \”Juno.\”
(http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/stlog/2008/01/juno_reconsidered.php)
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The Post-Dispatch, as is its custom, has demonstrated that its love for abortion trumps everything else. Is it not coercion if a business threatens to fire an employee who becomes pregnant? Is it not coercion if it threatens to cut the pay or benefits of an employee who becomes pregnant? Is it not coercion if a school offers a girl the choice of getting an abortion or losing a scholarship? These are things at which even the most ardent supporter of abortion rights ought to recoil. Your blindness in this matter is startling.
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