It is likely that Colorado will, once again, have a so-called "personhood" measure on the ballot this November that seeks to have fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses treated as if they were entirely separate constitutional persons. If approved by Colorado's Secretary of State, this year's version of the measure, Proposed Initiative 46, adds some detail, including a provision explicitly and unmistakably banning women who have become pregnant as a result of rape from having abortions. The amendment states: "No innocent [fertilized egg, embryo or fetus] created through rape or incest shall be killed for the crime of his or her father." Given the recent attention to Missouri Congressman Todd Akin's claim that women can't become pregnant as a result of "legitimate rape," I thought this provision deserved some attention.
As the media has widely reported, Rep. Akin, while on Fox News, asserted that women possess a biological mechanism to ward off pregnancy if they become victims of "legitimate rape." Specifically he said, "If it is a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." Dr. John Willke, the former president of the National Right to Life Committee, was then cited in the media as the primary source supporting this point of view. Dr. Willke has claimed that such things as physical and emotional trauma make it highly unlikely for women to get pregnant from rape.
This claim, however, not only lacks any basis in science but is directly contradicted by Colorado's Proposed Initiative 46. The amendment assumes that women can get pregnant from rape and that the state must be given new power to prevent women from ending the pregnancies caused by this particularly cruel and devastating form of violence.
The fact that rape can result in pregnancy is not only confirmed by scientists and by the lived experience of women, but it is well-known that rape and forced pregnancy are used as conscious and deliberate tools of war. For example, in 1993, the organization Equality Now presented these findings from a board member sent to Bosnia-Herzegovina to investigate allegations of mass rape, forced pregnancy, and genocide. According to the investigator:
When the Serbian forces came to Miljevina, they turned the local gymnasium into a rape camp. Families were separated, and women and children were kept in the gym, where all of the women and girls over ten years old were raped in the first few days.... There are rape camps all over the country. Thousands of women are being raped and killed. Thousands of women are pregnant as a result of rape. Over and over again, everywhere I went in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Croatian refugee camps, women told me stories of abomination -- of being kept in a room, raped repeatedly and told they would be held until they gave birth to Serbian children.
Some call such practices "genocidal rape" and define it as the systematic and repeated sexual violence for the purposes of destroying a targeted group by the humiliation and impregnation of the women in that group with the persecuting army's progeny. Today, the international human rights community has not only recognized rape as a form of torture, but it has recognized rape and forced impregnation as war crimes and as crimes against humanity. International law now explicitly outlaws these acts, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court includes both rape and forced impregnation among the crimes over which it has jurisdiction.
Individual acts of rape are clearly not the same as "war" or "genocidal" rape, but they are also designed to humiliate and assert power over women and may just as easily cause pregnancy. If Proposed Initiative 46 passes, men who rape women in Colorado will be secure in the knowledge that their efforts to humiliate and degrade those women will be backed up and reinforced by state action forcing those women to go to term -- whether they want to or not.
The real question that needs to be addressed is not whether rape can cause pregnancy. The question is: Will measures that ban women who have been impregnated by rape from having abortions be enacted, enabling rapists, with state support, even greater power to deprive women of their dignity and personhood?
This piece originally appeared on RH Reality Check.
Follow Lynn M. Paltrow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Lynn Paltrow
The idea that "person-hood" entitled me to gestation is ludicrous. I am a person NOW. Whether I was or not then (I wasn't) I am definitely a person now. And if I tried to take so much as a drop of her blood NOW I'd face criminal charges.
The maximum possible rights that can be bestowed on the fetus I was are the rights I have now. And those rights do not entitle me to unwilling flesh. If I'm going to die without a fluid/tissue/bone/etc donation from her I get to **ask nicely and hope she says yes**.
Cause if she refuses me I die.
My right to life does not entitle me to steal bits of her that I need more than she does.
And if it doesn't now, then it sure as (*^&&) didn't then.
What happened to her was evil and wrong and I will not be your excuse for it.
Obama wants to expand Abortion into Euthanasia, the after-birth abortion. This he has voted on.
Id rather have a Birther n Chief than a Dog-eater n Chief any day of the week
With Clinton and Obama on the same the Democratic Party will have to hide the children from the accused rapist criminally Impeached President Bill Clinton and hide your dogs and cats from the appetite of Obama. Thats their idea of America dog meat for everyone, cooked Democtatic Style
If you can't control your reproduction then everything in your life can be stripped from you. It can deny you education, employment, opportunity, love ... everything.
And thats even ignoring the fact that there is no magic 8 ball out there which accurately determines which pregnancies will be lethal and which won't so we are talking about the cold blooded murder of a couple of women a day, every day, through forced pregnancy ... and thats if we ignore deaths from self-abortions and pretend that coerced pregnancies are no more lethal than average which is manifestly untrue since the demographics that abort the most also have the highest maternal death rates.
this man is expounding? I respect the pro life movement. Even if I am pro choice. But listening to these people spew complete and utter lies. In this day and age with so much information at your finger tips. I say there is no hope for the electorate. Ignorance will over ride logic. Well not to all but too many of the voting electorate.
They overwhelmingly decide that it is better that a fetus should die than they go protest somewhere else. They'll trample fetuses and deny healthcare to children "for the cause" without a thought.
Try it next time you see some jerk harassing a doctor's office and see for yourself. This isn't about sex, and it isn't about babies, it is about power, dominance, and control. Fitting as forced pregnancy is .. well it is what makes rape bad. Rape doesn't make unwilling pregnancy bad. The merest possibility of coerced gestation is what makes rape bad. Forced pregnancy is torture and I'm happy to see the UN is recognizing this.
In fact, in all the years I've been doing this only **ONE** protester started packing her things to go when I offered them the donation deal. ONE! The look of horror she gave her fellow protesters when they started arguing with me was enlightening. She **actually believes** that fetuses are people and her disgust made a tremendous contrast with the rest.
I don't question what you say. But I repsect what they believe and want them
to respect what I embrace. I am pro choice as I said. Thank you.
IF Romeny/Ryan get elected they will enact this law.
So any woman (or man) who gets raped under Ryans law can send him a Thankyou note for the priviliege of being raped.
Have to love these 2 "Moral Christians".
This statement indicates just how meaningless women are to those who drafted Initiative 46. While the "rights" of a glob of cells are defined and defended, the rights of the raped mother go completely unmentioned. Colorado women (and women around the country and the world) need to realize that the GOP think of them as nothing more than seed vessels.
While this perversion of social-engineering-as-law initially impact women, we don't yet know how destructive these laws are.
In this fight, we need our men to get just as angry as we women.
They must process this as a personal outrage, not just an "I'm-angry-because-republican-attitudes-toward-women-are-awful?" sentiment.
It's not just a woman's issue, it is a civil rights issue; a human rights issue; a right to privacy issue.
We need their bass and baritone added, in equal measure, to our alto and soprano of outrage...
How dare you anoint yourselves head of MY household!...strip me of my role as husband/partner at a time when my wife/partner needs me most!...force my family and I to suffer needlessly...strip my daughter of her right to bear a child at a time of her choosing first by her rapist, and now by you!...emasculate me in my own home!
It is imperative that every voice is at full power because, in true republican arrogance; unstoppable as the Titanic, they are moving forward in their obsessive quest to restore woman to her "rightful" place.
Try getting out of the kitchen...or finding a pair of shoes...then.
And reproductive autonomy?
What's that?
I am grateful for the hard work and dedication of the suffrogates/feminists who fought for our rights. The vile and denigrating tenor of comments inspired some historical facts of the women's rights movement: back-alley abortions thru early 1970s caused approx. 50% of all maternal deaths 1,000s dieing US and around the world. The movement also addressed and legitimized rape victims decrying the 1960s- ‘70s, male-dominated law-enforcement agencies and a court system routinely letting rapists go due to the prevailing prejudicial attitudes toward women. Feminism achieved: women never need lie about rape again.
Laissez faire attitudes regarding Roe v Wade and womens' constitutional rights sickens me. I, as well as many women, do not take these inherent rights of choice for granted nor assume they will always be there. A human rights activist with concern for the human condition - I will always speak for victims’ rights sharing truth in the face of adversity.
And if we look at the anger and comments, we seem to have fallen for that red herring. So many of us are reacting as if Roe v. Wade has been overturned and we must fight to get it back.
Repubs this is what's called critical thinking...we can count on someone to speak sanity to your crazy, it may take a moment but we eventually get there.
Neither do we cannibalize our own when they speak the truth.
F&F!
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges
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At least 38 of the 50 states across America have introduced foetal homicide laws that were intended to protect pregnant women and their unborn children from violent attacks by third parties – usually abusive male partners – but are increasingly being turned by renegade prosecutors against the women themselves.
South Carolina was one of the first states to introduce such a foetal homicide law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found only one case of a South Carolina man who assaulted a pregnant woman having been charged under its terms, and his conviction was eventually overturned. Yet the group estimates there have been up to 300 women arrested for their actions during pregnancy.
In other states laws designed to protect children against the damaging effects of drugs have similarly been twisted to punish childbearers.
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