Anti-abortion legislators need a dose of compassion

I have never before written publicly about abortion. The topic has always struck me as impossibly mired in the fight between two polarized camps, the extremes of which espouse abject individualism: the rights of a fetus vs. the rights of a woman.

Recent antiabortion legislation in Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, and other states has caused me to rethink my public silence. These extremely restrictive antiabortion bills, some of which declare personhood at six weeks post-conception, politicize the debate in ways we haven’t seen before. Alabama’s law makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest—a feature guaranteed to inflame the debate. Antiabortion advocates hope these measures will end up being reviewed by the Supreme Court and lead to overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion.

The fact that males overwhelmingly dominate these state legislatures is hardly insignificant. One can imagine a very different debate were men able to get pregnant. (We shouldn’t be surprised that the male impotence drug Viagra received almost immediate health insurance coverage while oral contraception for women had to wait more than a decade longer for comparable coverage.) Since male legislators will never be obligated to produce a child against their will, the idea of turning rape victims into unwilling incubators only points to the cruelty of trading compassion for politics. That more respect would be given to the actions of a rapist than to the unwelcome choices facing the woman he impregnates, or that a physician performing an abortion could face up to 99 years in prison, defies all logic.