April 6, 2016
Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster for the Republican Party. It’s not just that he’s ruining their chances to win the presidency. It’s also that he has exposed the party’s hypocrisy on abortion.
When Trump said women should receive “some form of punishment” for getting an abortion if the procedure was banned, conservatives were quick to denounce his comments. Ditto the right-to-life advocates.
“We have never advocated, in any context, for the punishment of women who undergo abortion,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List.
But Trump’s comment wasn’t far afield. It reflects the logical progression of the party’s antiabortion juggernaut.
If you revile abortions as akin to “thousands upon thousands upon thousands of children being murdered in the womb,” as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared in the second Republican presidential debate, doesn’t it logically follow that women would be punished for the crime?
Absolutely.
Laws in 38 states now allow a person to be charged with homicide if she or he is deemed responsible for the unlawful death of a fetus, writes Andrea Rowan, an analyst at the Guttmacher Institute, in a report released last fall.
Not all of these laws clearly exempt the pregnant woman herself from being charged, Rowan writes. “These laws are even being used to pursue women who are merely suspected of having self-induced an abortion, but in fact had suffered miscarriages.”
In Indiana, a young woman named Purvi Patel is now serving 20 years of a 46-year prison sentence — the first woman to be convicted under Indiana’s feticide law for ending her own pregnancy.
At the same time, in the GOP’s antiabortion zeal to prove its belief in “life,” state Republican lawmakers are shutting down or financially undermining women’s health centers.
The prime target is Planned Parenthood, although only about 3 percent of its programs involve abortion services. Most of its work involves health education, family planning, preventive care and screening for diseases such as breast cancer and HIV/AIDS.
In Texas, which boasts some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, lawmakers slashed the state’s family planning budget by two-thirds in 2011. Once again, the target was Planned Parenthood and abortion providers. But the net was cast wider than anticipated, and dozens of health clinics closed across the state.
Since then, the number of Texas women receiving reproductive health care services has dropped by more than half. Although the state is now providing other monies to open new clinics, the pace is not keeping up with demand.
Florida has followed suit. The governor just signed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood that could cut thousands of patients’ access to birth control, cancer screenings, STD tests and more.
Ironically, Texas and Florida are both prime entry points for the Zika virus. Transmitted largely by mosquitoes, Zika can lead to microcephaly and fetal death. These babies have unusually small heads, neurological damage and intellectual disabilities, and may be deaf and blind. They need close attention and regular medical care.
The Zika outbreak has been called a “public health emergency of international concern” by the World Health Organization.
With little to no access to public heath clinics, who will care for pregnant women who contract the virus? If they choose to keep their baby, where will they find health care — and at what cost? What if these women want an abortion?
If women can no longer get affordable and effective contraception, or adequate prenatal care, or can’t get an abortion because the private clinic is too far away or too expensive, untold numbers may be forced to self-abort.
These women not only face medical dangers, but they may also face criminal prosecution.
Donald Trump, following the logic of his party’s pro-life stance, unwittingly stumbled upon a larger truth: a Republican legal strategy that will, in fact, punish women.
This op-ed first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 2016