My Point of View by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

 

With two new conservative Supreme Court justices, the Roe vs. Wade decision is in serious jeopardy. President Trump, a latecomer to the anti-abortion movement, said during the 2016 campaign that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions.

His campaign quickly released a clarification, but the mask had briefly slipped. This is the implicit driving force behind the “pro-life” agenda: punishment of women.

Here are the stories of two women. Some details are traumatic.

One of the women was a stunning rural Midwestern ingenue who moved to Washington, D.C., on a patriotic adventure with her sister during World War II to work for the War Department. She went on a date with a serviceman, and he raped her.

Maybe she didn’t fight back hard enough, or sent mixed signals or wore the wrong clothes — you know the drill — and she was punished.

Shortly after the assault, she realized she was pregnant. Her situation had gone from horrifying to desperate.

She sought an abortion, but they were illegal, and she didn’t have connections to obtain a safe procedure. The one she got went badly, the abortionists panicked, and her sister physically stopped them from dumping her unconscious body into the Potomac River. She could have drowned, but, alas, there must be some form of punishment.

Punishment. Over and over.

She survived these traumas and went on to marry for love and give birth to a houseful of children. Decades later, she counseled one of her granddaughters to carry cash in her bra when she went on dates so she could reach safety if she needed to.

A few years after the grandmother passed away, the granddaughter was raped by a friend at a party. She became pregnant from the assault, too, but by then a number of things had changed.

She could get a safe, legal abortion. The stigma of being an unwed mother was much less. She could receive government support to raise a child as a single mother. Her family would accept her if she kept the baby. What did she choose?

She decided to continue the pregnancy, and her child is now nearing adulthood. She had better, safer options to choose from than her grandmother did. Raising a child alone isn’t easy, but it seemed possible, and she went for it.

These women are my relatives, and many families have similar tales, but fewer people know about the horror stories as we lose grandmothers, mothers and aunts who lived through them. It has been two generations since the terrible consequences of illegal abortion.

Many of today’s elected Republicans want to end legal abortion, cut the programs that help women avoid unintended pregnancies, and curtail the ones that support them in keeping unintended pregnancies.

This is not a “pro-life” agenda. It is pro-birth and pro-forced pregnancy. It’s steeped in patriarchy and pre-modern fear of women.

The most effective way to reduce abortions is access to low-cost or no-cost birth control, because it reduces unintended pregnancies which account for the vast majority of abortions. For unintended pregnancies that do happen, resources like affordable housing, child care subsidies, living wages, children’s health care and food assistance are critical support for helping women choose to continue their pregnancies.

This is all in the Democratic agenda. Let women make decisions for their own bodies. Support mothers and their children. It is a pro-woman, pro-mother and pro-child agenda.

Illegal abortions wouldn’t be as dangerous as before but would expose women, particularly poor women, to cruelty. (Wealthy women will always have safe, private options.) Women could again face higher costs and potential sexual coercion in exchange for services. Do-it-yourself abortions, this time with pills, are already making a comeback. Do we want to subject our daughters and granddaughters to risks because we believe deep down there must be “some form of punishment”?

Rep. Peggy Bennett has again co-sponsored a bill (H.F. 271) in the Minnesota Legislature that would ban abortion at effectively six weeks, with exceptions only for the health of the mother, not rape or incest. Without a federal backstop, this is the kind of draconian legislation that could pass into law if Republicans like her controlled our state.

It is punishment to force a girl or woman to carry the baby of a man (possibly a male relative) who raped her. To endure a pregnancy that she couldn’t scrape money together within a couple weeks to end. To continue a pregnancy because she didn’t realize she had conceived within a short window of time. To carry a nonviable pregnancy to term.

This legislation is misogynist to its core. The motivation behind it is punishment of women and control of their sexuality. Legislators who truly want to “protect life” focus on helping girls, women and mothers. They are mainly Democrats.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.