The abortion issue is set to make a comeback in the 2012 elections beyond the dust up of the Todd Akin “legitimate rape” comments on Sunday. Late yesterday CNN reported that a draft of the GOP platform language is calling for a Constitutional amendment to ban all abortion without explicit exemptions for rape or incest.
The draft of the platform that was crafted in Tampa by a subcommittee of the Republican Party’s official platform committee reads as follows:
“Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”
This isn’t the first time that the idea of banning all abortion even in cases of rape or incest has been floated as a policy idea. Similar platforms have appeared at GOP conventions in recent years, but back in 2000, then-candidate John McCain argued with then-Governor George W. Bush about language calling for the ban of all abortions. At the time, McCain had wanted exceptions for rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother. But in 2008, McCain backed off from calling for that exception in deference to more socially conservative members of the party.
And more recently, Rep. Akin and Rep. Ryan, who now is on the Romney ticket, sought to limit the Hyde amendment that prohibits federal funding of abortion. They, along with other GOPers in the House, wanted to only cover victims of “forcible rape” without defining what that meant.
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.. these old white religious extremist just can not leave a woman's right to sex and birth control alone… sort
of makes one wonder if they are jealous of something they don't get much of… or know much about…other
than bible biiology.
With every law there are consequences for breaking it. So what will be the consequences for women and health care professionals who seek/provide abortions? I can't seem to find this part of the GOP platform anywhere. Will pregnant women seeking abortions be convicted of child endangerment, jailed, forced into an unwanted pregnancy, then have the baby put in an orphanage or foster care? What happens when these women decide at some future date that they do want children? Since they have already been found unfit, will the State already have the authority to confiscate their newborns or other living children?
Will health care professionals also be thrown in jail? What a waste of the work force!!
Will women who spontaneously abort be forced to undergo the due process of law (trial)?
What happens to rape victims? Will they also be incarcerated and forced against their will, into pregnancy? What happens to these rape victims who die as a result of the pregnancy they were forced into? Will the rapists be able to sue their victims for child custody?
What this means is that women's reproductive organs will no longer belong to them. They will belong to the State and the State will have absolute decision-making authority over all women's reproductive rights.
"Unborn"? That also means reproductive potential, so what happens to women who want their tubes tied? Tube tying effectively ends a woman's reproductive potential of all of her "unborn" eggs.
Where are the women's reproductive rights in this GOP right to life platform? They are not there because the GOP platform strips away the right of self-determination, the liberty of reproductive choice, and freedom from an overbearing, intrusive government regarding an intensely private, personal decision.