Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican candidate for Missouri's Senate seat, clearly wins the Stupid Ass award of the week, for saying that he didn't think anti-abortion laws needed a rape exception, because women almost never get pregnant from rape.
Lots of outraged commentary from both liberals and conservatives.
I feel like the country needs one big class about sex and reproduction.
Apt. 11d 
Not just some info about biology, but a very slight knowledge of world issues – which I would kind of expect in a politician – would indicate that women raped as a part of ethnic conflict, civil war or war regularly end up with babies as a result which causes long-term social issues. Honestly.
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He went further than talking about statistics (i.e. the incidence of pregnancy from rape). He actually said that women have a way of shutting off pregnancy if they’ve “legitimately” been raped. Which really does raise concerns about education about reproduction. Makes me wonder what the mechanism is that he imagines (does he think women can close their cervixes? or is he imagining refusing to release an egg? or the egg itself could refuse to be fertilized? or, and you have to worry about this one if you’re a conservative, can women actually refuse to allow the embryo to implant? or be so stressed out that the pregnancy stops?)
I was simply flabbergasted when I read the comment.
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“would indicate that women raped as a part of ethnic conflict, civil war or war regularly end up with babies as a result which causes long-term social issues. ”
Oh, but he doesn’t think those women were “legitimately” raped. They were collaborators. If they had been “legitimately” raped, they would have closed their bodies to the sperm (presumably by the same mechanism that one could close one’s body to a knife, avoiding all that annoying bleeding).
I do not believe this is a mis-statement or a conversational gaffe. I think the guy really believes that women can prevent rape and pregnancy. It’s not all that extreme an idea in the world and pretty much of the same cloth of all the blame the victim rhetoric around rape.
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Way back when, on a politics listserv I was on, I was known for getting one guy to blow his top regularly by simply stating that all “pro-life” positions come down to punishing women for having sex. Ah, good times.
But basically, I am right. There is a profound misogyny at the root of anti-abortion ideology that comes from somehow holding the woman responsible for getting pregnant. Because her body has, at some level, “welcomed” the zygote/embryo/fetus, she therefore wanted it to happen and thus is responsible for it.
It’s also an ideology of personal responsibility that is unique to women, as men, organizations, and corporations are not held to the same standards of responsibility, but that’s another story.
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Wendy, this guy’s idiocy is no more representative of the pro-life position than Whoopi Goldbeg’s “it wasn’t rape-rape” was representative of the progressive position.
I’m a woman who is anti-abortion. I am not a misogynist. I am, however, fascinated by what you seem to imply. Except in instances of rape, who *is* responsible for the existence of the zygote/embryo/fetus if not both of its parents? Do you really mean to say that a woman is *not* responsible, along with her partner, for a pregnancy as long as she didn’t want or intend to become pregnant? That seems almost as unsound, from a biological perspective, as Aken’s absurd position.
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Sounds to me like Kate Marie is a troll!
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Why, Jen? I’m a pretty regular reader here, but an infrequent commenter. What’s trollish about my comment/ question? I agree with everyone here that what Akin said was assinine. But Wendy’s comment implied a position that I found problematic, so I questioned her about it. Why is that trollish?
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I looked at his bio. He’s 65. Born in 1947, attended local Missouri schools, then Worcester Polytechnic. Army Core of Engineers, IBM, management of a steel company.
In other words, he’s well educated, not a hick, and someone who isn’t trying to make himself into a national laughingstock.
I assume the local Missouri schools didn’t cover sex ed well in the years between ’47 and ’65. Maybe he was absent when reproduction was covered in bio? Maybe he placed out of bio, and placed into physics/chemistry/engineering instead.
We have a family joke about some of the gaping holes in our daughter’s science preparation. Her K-8 public school did lots of “advanced” projects based on physics, chemistry, ecological questions, but nearly ignored basic science knowledge.
Sex ed in that school was…both explicit and lacking essential details. She knows of several different contraceptive methods. She did not know what a “heterosexual” was. Which means, of course, the course didn’t mention “homosexuals.” I should have known the course was not sufficient, when no one bothered to write angry letters to the local paper.
I handed her a copy of “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” and gave her a list of friends and relatives she could approach for answers, if it was too embarrassing to ask parents.
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Except in instances of rape, who *is* responsible for the existence of the zygote/embryo/fetus if not both of its parents?
On the off chance that this was not intended to be an intentional troll, the trollish move is shifting from the definition of “responsible” that Wendy was using — “Who is responsible” = “Who is to blame” — and then changing to a different definition of responsible, “Who has the obligation to deal with the ramifications?”
In the case of a rape-caused pregnancy, the rapist is “responsible” for the pregnancy, and should go to jail because of it. Similarly, pro-lifers hold the woman “responsible” for getting pregnant, and want to sentence her to 9 months of pregnancy as punishment.
In the case of an accidental pregnancy between consenting adults, obviously no is “responsible” in that sense at all. The father may be financially responsible for paying for the abortion or the child, the pregnant woman may have the decisional responsibility for determining how to deal with the pregnancy. But no one is “responsible” the way a criminal is “responsible” for his crime.
Meanwhile, if your view of responsibility is, “You were not careful enough when you had sex, so now you have to suffer all physical consequences,” then you are, in fact, a misogynist.
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This is what Wendy said: “But basically, I am right. There is a profound misogyny at the root of anti-abortion ideology that comes from somehow holding the woman responsible for getting pregnant. Because her body has, at some level, ‘welcome’ the zygote/embryo/fetus, she therefore wanted it to happen and thus is responsible for it.”
Wendy’s comment nowhere mentions rape or defines responsibility as “blame” for a crime. I took her to be arguing that, in all cases (consensual and non-consensual), women are not responsible for getting pregnant. If she was simply arguing that women who become pregnant as a result of rape are not to blame for their pregnancy, then she and I agree.
Of course, in the case of accidental pregnancy, no one is responsible the way a criminal is responsible for his crime, but my point is that the consenting adults are clearly as responsible for the existence of the zygote/embryo/fetus as a child who hits a baseball into the neighbor’s yard is responsible for the existence of the broken window.
No, despite your attempt to put my view of responsibility into phrasing that you can dismiss as misogynistic, my position is that abortion is the taking of a human life, and that the right of a human being to life should, in most cases, take precedence over other rights.
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Todd Akin doesn’t think he’s a misogynist, either.
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consenting adults are clearly as responsible for the existence of the zygote/embryo/fetus as a child who hits a baseball into the neighbor’s yard is responsible for the existence of the broken window.
Right. In a normal non-Akin world, the kid has to pay for the broken window. As a punishment. For the bad thing he did.
Perhaps, for the sake of consistency, Todd Akin will sponsor a bill requiring all such window-breaking children to spend the next nine months walking around with shattered glass on their bedroom floor.
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Well, um, alrighty then. Case closed.
Any response to my other point? Was I misreading you? If so, I apologize.
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The point you are misreading is that you are continuing to view getting pregnant as doing a “bad thing” — like a kid breaking a window. It’s like saying we should ban aspirin so we all suffer through our hangovers. Sex is not “bad.” Pregnancy is not a “punishment.” And if I hit a baseball through my own window, I’m perfectly free to leave it broken.
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The whole thing about abortions being allowed in cases of rape is ridiculous anyway because the safest abortions take place within 12 weeks, and no rape conviction is going to happen within 12 weeks.
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1. Akin’s an idiot. He has nothing to do with my point, and, as I’ve already said a couple of times now, if I misread Wendy, I apologize.
2. Sex is not bad. I have nowhere argued that sex is bad. Playing baseball is not bad, either. I used the example of breaking a window as an analogy for a situation in which the unfortunate consequence (breaking a window) was not intended and yet in which the baseball-playing kid is nevertheless responsible for the broken window.
3. I’ll state my point again. The unintended pregnancy which results from a consensual relationship is the responsibility of those who engaged in that consensual relationship. Those people made that pregnancy happen; they are responsible for the existence of the pregnancy and thus of the existence of the zygote/embryo/fetus. Is this point in dispute?
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I always learned in Religious School that when a baby is conceived, there are three souls present — the mother, the father, and the Lord.
So, I guess the three of them share responsibility equally. But since the House of Worship generally has more disposable income, it’s only fair that it should have to spring for the abortion.
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But, more seriously again, “responsible” is still doing a lot of work here. When I am a klutz and don’t look where I am going and trip and break my leg, I am solely “responsible,” but I still expect my health insurance to cover the doctor’s bill. When I am playing baseball in my back yard and break my window, I am “responsible,” and will have to pay to get my window fixed unless my homeowner’s policy covers it.
I would object to any law requiring me to spend my winter with a broken window, or not let me set my broken leg. And I would object to any law that somehow limited my options because of “responsibility” passed some insurance threshold or legal threshold.
Aristotle has his four causes, which are just as easily translated to the Four Responsibilities. Depending on where you are trying to go with “Who is responsible,” the answer is different.
Who is Responsible = Who Makes The Decision = The Pregnant Woman
Who Is Responsible = Who Has To Pay = Both Parents Equally, or Their Respective Insurance Policies
Who Is Responsible = Who Is Morally Blameworthy = Nobody
Who Is Responsible = Who Must Suffer As A Result Of Her Decision = Nobody Again
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Ragtime, I have not gone beyond the question of responsibility, to what that responsibility should legally and morally entail, in my comments, because I was responding directly to something that Wendy said about reponsibility. She has yet to clarify whether I was misreading her.
But that’s neither here nor there at this point, because you seem to have conceded that both consensual sexual partners are responsible for an unintended pregnancy; that is, but for their consensual act, the pregnancy (zygote/embryo/fetus) would not exist.
Your apparent irritation with me presumably arises from my opposition to abortion and thus from what you think I *would* argue about what that responsibility entails. I have no interest in having such a discussion in Laura’s comments section, though, because a) it’s always and everywhere futile to have such discussions in internet comments sections; and b) such a discussion really would derail the thread. I certainly didn’t think the point I made in my original comment would provide such a distraction. Anyway, you may rest assured that I have thought long and hard about my position on abortion (heck, I’ve read Aristotle, too!), and it is very unlikely to change. If you’re interested, my views are roughly aligned with those outlined in Christopher Kaczor’s “The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice.”
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I find Akin’s belief to be startlingly akin (hah!) to medieval ideas about conception. Rape charges couldn’t be laid in many codes if a woman became pregnant because it was assumed that she had to enjoy intercourse in order to conceive.
Talk about victim-blaming, eh? And that’s what Akin’s mindset about rape does: tell women that they must have secretly wanted the sex or the baby or both if they became pregnant and so the sexual assault they experienced couldn’t have been rape or their body would have shut it down. Bah: more bull from expert purveyors of the same.
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because you seem to have conceded that both consensual sexual partners are responsible for an unintended pregnancy;
Yep. Troll.
Sorry I went down the rabbit hole, but I want so much to give people the benefit of the doubt.
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I’m really not getting it. Can someone explain why that means I’m a troll?
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“Because you seem to have conceded that both consensual sexual partners are responsible for an unintended pregnancy; that is, but for their consensual act, the pregnancy (zygote/embryo/fetus) would not exist.
Seriously, sorry to be a noodge about this, but I was really unaware that this statement is so controversial as to damn anyone who utters it to trolldom. In fact, it seems so *uncontroversial* that I am genuinely surprised that it has caused such a distraction. Furthermore, this seems to be the go-to accusation anytime that I admit that I oppose abortion in an internet community that is generally pro-choice. I am a regular reader of this blog, and I have commented here before, though not frequently. Can someone explain why that statement constitutes trolling? Sorry for being so obtuse, but I’m genuinely confused.
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I think the issue around trolling is that you’re not responding to the remarks other people have made so much as taking the opportunity to restate your position over and over. You’re anti-abortion and people who aren’t getting raped should take responsibility.
But you’re not adding a lot to the discussion about this particular issue which is not really related to Akin. Akin’s comments are astounding not because they are anti-abortion but because they place the responsibility for figuring out what is “legitimate rape” on _whether a woman’s body got pregnant or not_. Which is nuts, nuts, nuts and really is a fundamentally misogynist position since it is relying on the *womb* to determine the validity of her experience in having been assaulted as a *human being*.
I have a bad habit of posting tangentially sometimes myself so I know it doesn’t necessarily mean trolling, but if you were really wondering…this is why.
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I’m not a philosopher, and I’m sure there is a whole philosophy of responsibility out there. I’m just not a huge fan of responsibility as a concept because, as Ragtime points out, it’s all very ambiguous a concept.
There are people out there who are big on the concept of responsibility, and I usually consider those people to be lawyers and 12 year olds. (Note: I’m thinking there’s an interesting paper to be written on Brave, female-centered storytelling, and the ethics of responsibility, but I’m not gonna write it.) Maybe it’s because I’m a mom, maybe it’s because I’m an oldest child, but I often have to deal with consequences that are caused by someone else. IOW, I have to clean up a lot of messes I didn’t make. If I had the kind of personality that dwells on such injustices, I might be “into” ideas about responsibility, but mainly I’m a pragmatist who sees a mess that needs to be cleaned up and does so. I generally think we should all go around trying to make the world a better place and not focusing on who’s to blame.
I actually think the Akin-esque/Ryan-esque hardline position on abortion (though not on “legitimate” rape) is the more logically consistent position. I mean, if you believe pre-birth life is morally/legally equal to post-birth life, then logically, women who have abortions should be prosecuted as murderers, and rape is not a good enough excuse for an abortion, “legitimate” or not. Anything in between that and a completely pro-choice POV is a gray area. The minute you make an exception, you are saying that pre-birth life is not equal to post-birth life, and so you have to involve whole new areas of rationalization for your position, such as the ethics of responsibility. But these are not morally absolute positions, and that’s why in the end, most people believe in the pro-choice position. It’s logically sound – i.e., the woman’s (post-birth) life is of greater importance than the z/e/f’s (pre-birth) life – and the knowledge that women will more often than not make the decision to continue a pregnancy reassures us. We’re not willing to live in a world where the z/e/f is equal to the woman in whose body it exists. We don’t want the consequences of that moral view. Mainly, this is because we want to have sex, but that’s a whole other story.
It’s actually kind of funny, but it seems that the more sophisticated an argument I ever get into with someone who is anti-abortion, the more I concede that the z/e/f is a person, and the more the anti-abortion person has to argue that z/e/f’s are not as equal as women but have some rights that need to be taken into consideration.
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“Akin’s comments are astounding not because they are anti-abortion but because they place the responsibility for figuring out what is “legitimate rape” on _whether a woman’s body got pregnant or not_. Which is nuts, nuts, nuts and really is a fundamentally misogynist position since it is relying on the *womb* to determine the validity of her experience in having been assaulted as a *human being*.”
Nicely expressed, Jenn.
I am always way guilty of going on a tangent, but I have very bad topic discipline.
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Jenn and Wendy, thanks for your responses, and I agree with you completely about the absurdity of Akin’s statement and its implications regarding rape/consent/victim-blaming.
I understand why the repetition of my point may have seemed like trolling. All I was trying to get across was that my intent wasn’t to debate the issue of abortion, but merely to question a premise about responsibility that didn’t make sense to me. Maybe if I’d used the term “cause” instead if responsibility? Anyway, Wendy, thank you for clarifying, and while I may not completely agree with your perspective regarding responsibility, I can certainly agree that “we should all go around trying to make the world a better place and not focusing on who’s to blame.” Of course, how to make the world a better place is fraught with all of the same issues and debates…
FWIW I agree with you that at least some of the people opposed to abortion are motivated by misogyny. I don’t like sharing the tent with them on that issue, but such is the nature of politics. I have two daughters of my own, and I do my best to call out misogyny and sexism where I see it. I agree with you, Wendy, that the no-exception-for-rape position is the most consistent (as is, say, Peter Singer’s at the other extreme, I would argue).
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The “exception for rape” position is very problematic for pro-lifers — I basically agree with Katie Marie about that. The fundamental problem is that if you want to ground your opposition to abortion in the “right to life of the fetus” then you are in a bind if you want to make an exception for rape — how could the way a fetus is conceived have any bearing on its right to life? (Think of grown adults — does the adult who was conceived through rape have less of a right to life than the rest of us? No). This is Philosophy 101 stuff (I teach it).
Unlike Wendy I am a philosopher, and yes, there is a philosophy of responsibility (it consumes many professional lives, which shows that we have a lot of luxury as a society). It is complicated.
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WTF?
Maybe it means you can only be raped if you’re not ovulating? If you’re ovulating, then you’re on your own? Great argument for preventative tubal ligation, maybe?
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I went to a Baptist school for grades 1-12; I graduated in 1991. Students at my school were taught what Akin says: a woman’s reproductive organs almost always shut down during a rape, so she will not get pregnant as a result. I remember one of my teachers telling us “that part of a woman’s body goes into shock.” That was the analogy used over and over again: just as the body’s major organs can shut during medical shock, the psychological shock of rape causes reproductive organs to shut down (i.e., ovulation won’t happen or will stop in its tracks, fertilization won’t occur, etc). Therefore, abortion is unnecessary.
This line of thinking never made a lot of sense to me, though I didn’t really question it until my senior year. I was in the minority of my classmates, however–most believed our teachers knew what they were talking about. I am sure that there are now many adults who went to that school wondering what was so wrong about what Akin said.
And btw, about 30% of girls in my class at some point from grades 7-12 got pregnant (and thus kicked out of school), so clearly our sexual education, such as it was (“If you have sex you’ll go to hell!”), didn’t prevent pregnancy.
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I have a good friend who taught at a number of Christian institutions and he mentioned that the Christian brand of sex ed generally didn’t lead to less kids having sex — It just led to less kids using birth control. He attributed it to kids somehow thinking that sex was ‘worse’ if you planned for it, versus if you claimed to simply be overwhelmed by your feelings at the time. (Kind of like 1st degree and 3rd degree sex having?) I wonder if there’s also an element of kids thinking about some variation of the argument above — that somehow they’re twisting their understanding of ‘your body shuts down during rape’ to think that ‘you can’t get pregnant if you really, really, really don’t want to.’
You all have inspired me to investigate more thoroughly what my own teens do and do not know about sex.
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Sorry, guys, that I was absent most of yesterday and couldn’t join in on the conversation. It might be another publish a post and run day. (I’m watching kids FT for the next 2 weeks.)
I’ve seen the “anti-abortionists want to blame women for having sex and generally hate women” argument on a lot on feminist blogs. I don’t like it, because it basically closes down debate. It creates a straw conservative. If your opponent is an evil, amorphous, rocks-for-brains asshole, then you can’t debate with that person. You also so severely offend border-line people that there is no hope of recruiting them to your side. I also hate the “war on women” rhetoric, because it also shuts down debate. I understand that politicians use that rhetoric to drum up their base (both sides do it), but I find it intellectually annoying and politically short sighted.
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“I’ve seen the “anti-abortionists want to blame women for having sex and generally hate women” argument on a lot on feminist blogs. I don’t like it, because it basically closes down debate. It creates a straw conservative. If your opponent is an evil, amorphous, rocks-for-brains asshole, then you can’t debate with that person.”
Call me strange, but if someone calls me a misogynist, I don’t say “I’m not a misogynist!” I actually engage in soul-searching to think about whether or not the position I’m supporting is logically misogynist.
I’m not a fan of coddling people who don’t want to think too deeply. We live in what bell hooks calls the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, and that means a pretty much all of us – yes, even me and you – support/express positions that are misogynist and racist sometimes. I think we should talk about that and think about that, not worry about hurting people’s feefees.
(Been having a lot of conversations with the 13 year old about stuff like this lately. She’s reading a lot of internet commentary on her favorite stuff, like Doctor Who and Avengers, and she’s reading critiques that say Steven Moffat and Joss Whedon are sexists. She doesn’t want to be sexist, so does that mean she should give up watching Who and Avengers? I’m trying to help her find a way to be a feminist and still be able to enjoy them, a kind of resisting reader thing.)
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Sure, I get that “name-calling” isn’t persuasive, but I think a lot of people who are “pro-life” who think they’re “all about the babies” have to do some serious thinking about how their ability to focus on “the babies” exists alongside some serious devaluing of women. IOW, they have to confront the reality that they wouldn’t be able to hold the positions they do unless they think, fundamentally, that most women (not them, of course, but maybe them–mauvais foi, I guess) are morally deficient and too stupid to make decisions under difficult and complex circumstances.
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@Sara – that explains a lot but I am still absolutely astounded at the myopic view that is required to believe that as a full-fledged adult.
I guess my views have been coloured by being aware of many stories out of places like Sierra Leone, Bosnia and so on where the issue of what to do with the children of rape-as-conquest is such a huge issue, not to mention the stories of the women who have carried them and then had to deal with the fallout. I really want to put someone like Mariatu Kamara in front of them.
While I would not vote for a politician who intended to enact anti-abortion legislation, I don’t have an issue with Akin’s actual stand on abortion in that if he thinks so, say so. If you really believe that women who are raped should be forced to carry babies to term, go ahead and say so. I do not agree, but at least we are dealing in actual matters of how this will actually work.
But don’t try to bend the rules of biology to suit so that your ethics don’t have to account for that. I think it is possible to be anti-abortion in a factual, ethical manner in that you acknowledge that you are, in fact, prepared to ruin women’s lives – not just rape victims but teenagers making bad choices, addicts, the poor, and so on – in order to preserve a baby’s chance for life.
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Sara, that’s fascinating information. I am not surprised, because it’s the kind of solution people come up with to deal with the cognitive dissonance of following through on ideology that creates consequences they find problematic. But it’s much nicer to have data than to have my surmise about a culture I know nothing about. It’s interesting to know that the theory was being taught as recently as 1991. Your info also supports my notion that Akin was saying what he believed and not misspeaking.
I also don’t think the concept is not as psychologically extreme as it is biologically impossible. It’s not all that different from the new-agey beliefs that welcoming fertility will help a woman become pregnant or that maintaining a positive outlook will cure cancer.
I remember, in college, reading an anthropological study of an african population where promiscuous sex among young teenagers was common, in which the anthropologist purported that the children just didn’t become pregnant (pregnancy was prevented by something to do with whether you touched elbows during sex or not). And, he seemed to find the argument plausible because no one would admit to abortions.
There’s a lot of misinformation about scientific and biological processes and lots of people never *really* need to confront the misinformation (especially when unmeasurable quantities “how much did you want/not want it” are part of the equation).
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The concept of original sin, and most Christian concepts of sinfulness, means that all people – not just women – are “morally deficient.” Our reason is compromised by the weight of sin and selfishness so we can come up with ways to justify acts such as abortion (or, in other arguments I have heard, capital punishment, or killing during a just war). These acts are wrong because we take on the responsibility of destroying life, and that responsibility should belong only to God. I don’t agree with this position, but it’s important not to just write it off as anti-woman.
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I remember, in college, reading an anthropological study of an african population where promiscuous sex among young teenagers was common, in which the anthropologist purported that the children just didn’t become pregnant (pregnancy was prevented by something to do with whether you touched elbows during sex or not). And, he seemed to find the argument plausible because no one would admit to abortions.
If the girls were malnourished, they may not have been ovulating regularly. Women in the 19th century reached puberty later than modern women. Competitive female athletes may not menstruate.
So, young African women might not have become pregnant, despite sexual activity, because they weren’t ovulating (yet, or regularly). Elbows are not essential.
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@af I don’t disagree that theoretically, that is the Christian viewpoint.
However, it seems to me that until I see Christians gathering to support with equal vehemence laws to guarantee child support, medical care for kids, food security and most of all free birth control, I’m not really impressed. If there were picketers in front of banks where men who don’t pay child support withdraw cash in equal numbers to abortion clinics I would be much more sympathetic to the idea that it’s not a misogynistic viewpoint.
Also it’s always seemed to me that if Christians really wanted to _prevent murder_ they would be the first to fund free birth control. Because if we’re weighing lives in the balance — the way we are with victims of rape, or young poor teenagers — the sin of using birth control, if it is even a sin (it’s not in the 10 commandments, unlike murder) — seems to me to be much less than murder, so why not start there.
Which is how I get to the conclusion, gradually, that it’s not really about MURDER; I think if you said “which is worse, killing your mother or using a condom?” or even “which is worse, not paying child support or killing your brother?” it would be pretty clear.
That’s why I conclude it really is about the control of sexuality, particularly women’s sexuality.
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Also, we’re all putting quotes around “legitimate”, but Akin explained that he meant “forcible” rape, which is the text used in the “no taxpayer funding” law supported by Ryan (and Akin).
As others have said, I think the key here is that we really do need to understand what rules our political candidates would put in place. Abortion is common in this country (1.2 million abortions in 2008, 22% of pregnancies ending in abortion 30% of women having had abortions by age 45); changing the laws surrounding abortion will have major impacts on our society. We do not live in the mythical world where women chose when they will get pregnant (even with the enormous technological advances in birth control).
Interestingly, if you look at the data on abortion, you find that the greatest correlate is not the laws, but the incidence of unplanned pregnancies. The catholic countries of south america, with restrictions to birth control and abortion have the highest rates of abortion.
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<You also so severely offend border-line people that there is no hope of recruiting them to your side. I also hate the "war on women" rhetoric, because it also shuts down debate.
The problem, as several posters have alluded to, but not really come right out and said, is that the more “moderate” positions are actually the more mysogynistic ones.
Absolutist “no abortion ever” positions could (at least theoretically, if not in practice) be premised on the value of the fetus’s life. Once you are willing to get more “moderate” and allow exceptions for rape and incest, you start drawing lines, and the line drawing is more incontrovertably based on your view of the woman’s blameworthiness. You allow abortion if it wasn’t their “fault.” And pregnancy becomes the punishment for the blameworthy.
So, from a pro-choice position, it’s kind of win/win. Your opponent is either an “extremist” or a “misogynist.” While these points have the advantage of being true, they also do have the habit of shutting down debate.
This is a problem if you value “debate” and hope to find some sort of “middle ground.” I, however, am happy to just point out why pro-lifers are wrong, and not waste a lot of time debating them on the finer points of “fetal quickening” or whatever.
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