The "Rape Exemption"

In my wide-ranging reading--anything from biographies, historical fiction, nonfiction, spy thrillers, biological and geological textbooks, blogs--I follow some feminist blogs to understand what's in the forefront of such issues.

Naturally the assault on abortion rights--or more broadly, women's bodily autonomy rights--is a prime topic.  I ran across this a couple weeks back that highlights one of the inconsistencies of some of the anti-abortion folks on the so-called rape exemption:

Question: What is the difference between a woman who wants an abortion after accidentally becoming pregnant with her boyfriend and a woman who wants an abortion after becoming pregnant through rape? Answer: The first woman voluntarily chose to have sex while the second woman didn’t.

In other words, people who want to see abortion banned but want to keep a rape exemption care very much whether a woman chooses to have sex or not. A woman who chooses to have sex should be required to deal with the “consequences,” i.e. pregnancy, birth, and child rearing. But a woman who becomes pregnant after being raped? Well, she didn’t choose to have sex so she shouldn’t have to deal with the “consequences.” In other words, if someone allows for a rape exemption, their opposition to abortion is not about “saving babies” but rather about making sure women who voluntarily choose to have sex and then become pregnant have to deal with the “consequences” of their decision to have sex.

It is likely that there are some people who believe abortion is murder but also support rape exemptions simply because they haven’t thought through the consistency of their position. They believe abortion is murder, but it seems instinctively wrong to force a woman who never chose to have sex in the first place but was instead forced against her will to carry and bear her rapist’s baby.
 

I don't know why this is so hard.  It's actually very easy: a woman gets to choose whether or not to be pregnant because it's her body.  BECAUSE IT'S HER BODY. 

Case closed.  Nobody else gets to decide, regardless of how "moral" their arguments may be.

 

Bodily Integrity and Pregnancy

I may as well complete the trifecta of ranting about people trying to control other people's lives (going along with my Galileo post (Thurs 15 April) and my post on Jesus' comments about gays (Sat 17 April).

Women should have an absolute right to control their bodily integrity.  We may not like their decision, but it is and must always be their decision.  I'v collected a couple of analogies that make perfect sense to me.

Check out an excellent article here.  Excerpt:

Our courts have always held that the government cannot compel an individual to use his or her body as an instrument for preserving people who are already born, much less for preserving a fetus in the womb. For example, the government cannot force a relative of a child afflicted with cancer to donate bone marrow or an organ to the child, even if the child is sure to die without the donation.

Obviously, if the state cannot force someone to undergo a bone marrow or organ transplant for a person already born, it cannot force a woman to continue a pregnancy that might entail great health risks for the sake of a fetus. As the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia stated in a 1989 decision, "surely a fetus cannot have rights superior to those of a person who has already been born."

Another thoughtful article is here.  Excerpt:

A second account of the abortion right, however, is the very different idea that no person should be forced to sustain another living creature with her body. The experience of pregnancy, on this view, is far too intimate and demanding for the law to mandate it of women, particularly when no similar physical altruism is generally required of men, who can choose not to donate blood or organs to relatives (or others) in need.

Far from demanding blood and organs from its citizenry, moreover, the law in this country protects even a dead person from compulsory organ donation. And this is true notwithstanding the fact that such organs - which will otherwise decompose in a graveyard or go up in flame -- could be used to save and preserve many lives.

When bodily integrity is so (perhaps excessively) prized, it must not give way just because it is the bodies of pregnant women at issue. If it does, then the law engages in invidious discrimination against women.

The connection to UltraRunning?  I value my personal freedom beyond measure--the freedom to live my life as I choose, the freedom to engage in leisure pursuits such as UltraRunning, and--if I were a woman--the freedom to control my own body.  It's all one logical whole.