I honestly can't figure out why any woman would vote for a Republican candidate. Pro-life, you say? But yet you don't want to fund welfare programs for single moms to take care of their kids because "she should have thought of that before having more kids." How is she supposed to keep from having more children if you make contraception more difficult to obtain (by allowing employers to prevent a woman's insurance from covering it and by taking away funding from Planned Parenthood, which is one of the few places a woman can go to get cheap or free contraception) and you also take away her choice to have an abortion? The "pro-life agenda" that is the Republican platform makes no sense unless you are a rich, white male.
Let's just go over the scenario from beginning to end for a divorced 20-something woman, assuming the Republicans have their way and everything they stand for gets passed. Let's even throw in the added constraint that she is believes in waiting for sex until marriage, because hey, that's obviously what Republicans think all women should do, even if they can't manage to hold themselves to that same standard. So hypocrisy aside, we'll just say this hypothetical woman is the epitome of "moral rectitude" and is quite chaste.
Our hypothetical woman cannot obtain birth control because her employer is Catholic and she can't afford it on her low salary, which is only a little over half of what her male coworkers get paid, but she can't fight that because the Republicans don't think there's any problem with paying women less if it encourages them to stay at home with the kids. And why should she bother if she isn't sexually active? Heck, she doesn't even have a boyfriend, so marriage is not on the horizon. She has two children from her previous marriage, but her ex is a deadbeat abuser who only sends her about a quarter of her state-mandated child support every other month. (Side note: we're also assuming she doesn't have any other problems like dysmenorrhea, endometriosis, etc., where the birth control pill is a common method of controlling symptoms. It's not like she could afford it anyway, since it's not covered by her insurance due to her employer's religion.)
She meets a friendly young man at a coffee shop and goes on a date with him, leaving her children with a close friend for the evening. While on that date, despite wearing conservative dress (because we all know that if you're wearing something sexy, you're just asking for it, right?), her date slips a roofie into her drink while she's in the restroom, tells the bartender that she has had too much to drink, and takes her home, where he rapes her. When she awakes from her drugged stupor, she realizes what happened and immediately reports the rape, but is then "placed in protective custody" for three days to prevent her from being able to go out and get a Plan B pill. The officer thinks that it causes abortions and wants to prevent what he believes is murder. Even if he hadn't done that, she is unable to afford it because again, it's not covered by insurance, and she doesn't have the cash, having just spent her last $20 on groceries the day before. While she is imprisoned, she ovulates. The sperm from her rapist, which can live for up to 5 days, fertilizes the egg, it implants, and she is pregnant.
When she misses her period, she takes a pregnancy test and finds out that she is pregnant. She doesn't want this child. She can't stand the man who raped her. She can barely afford to feed the children she already has, much less a third. She did not choose to have sex and therefore did not choose to get pregnant. She doesn't want to be reminded of that tragic night. But abortion has been made illegal in all circumstances, even in cases of rape. She has no choice but to carry to term. Every day, she is reminded of that horrible date gone wrong, as she is throwing up from morning sickness, as she is feeling round ligament pain, as she starts having trouble getting around, as she suffers from insomnia, even if she doesn't develop hyperemesis, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, or any number of other problems that can adversely affect a woman during pregnancy.
When she starts to show, people notice the lack of a wedding ring on her finger, and she gets dirty looks while in the checkout aisle at the grocery store. When she pays with her WIC card, she overhears someone complain about her being another lazy welfare mom.
When she finally gives birth, it is long and painful, resulting in a c-section. She now has permanent physical scars ultimately resulting from her rape, and every time she sees them, she is reminded of that night. She asks for a tubal ligation, since she's already open anyway, but she's at a Catholic hospital and they refuse because she's "too young and unmarried." Her insurance wouldn't cover it anyway, because again, her employer is Catholic.
Let's say she decides to keep the baby. When she sees her, she falls in love and can't bear to give her up. She certainly can't afford to raise yet another child on her low salary, and no child support will be forthcoming from her rapist. But due to all of the hoops she has to go through to get the assistance she needs, she is unable to get that assistance. The Republicans don't want their tax money going to lazy, single moms who can't keep their legs together, so she doesn't qualify. She considers adoption, but it has gotten much harder to adopt out these days because people don't want to raise someone else's potentially damaged children. They might have "issues," and that would be "hard." Plus, there are thousands of unwanted babies, and there just aren't enough couples who want to adopt to go around. The rest wind up in orphanages, where they are unloved and only minimally cared for, as the government has severely restricted the budget for their care.
Then suddenly, she receives notice that her rapist wants custody of her baby. Perhaps the calloused individual would say, "Look at that! A solution to her financial problems! Give the baby to her father!" But I know of no mother who would entrust the raising of her child, especially a female child, to her rapist. She tries to fight in court, but she can't afford a lawyer, and since rape is "just another method of conception," joint custody is granted. She is now forced to have regular contact with her rapist and leave her infant daughter in the care of someone who has previously taken advantage of an incapacitated female.
In order to make ends meet, her older children start working in a factory, alongside other poor children, including those from the orphanages. The Republicans have done away with child labor laws in order to "help" the poor. They do bring in a little bit of money, but because they have to spend all of their non-school hours working, they have no time for homework, and their grades start to slip. By the time they reach age 16, they are barely passing, and they just drop out of school to work. They grow up minimally educated and unable to obtain a high-paying job because they can't afford any sort of higher education, even trade school, because it costs too much and the government charges too much in interest on the few student loans that are still available.
Tell me, is that justice? Is that the kind of country the Republicans want us to live in? Do they want us to return to the way we were 200 years ago when robber barons controlled everything and the poor were merely expendable cheap labor? If Republicans are so dead-set against allowing women reproductive freedom, how can they then condemn the poor for needing help supporting their children? They would take away all of our choices and leave us as nothing more than breeders of a limitless cheap labor supply. Perhaps to the Republican party, that is all we are. They are so focused on the "baby" in the womb, they seem to forget that the womb has an owner, that the womb is a body part inside of that owner, and that that owner should be guaranteed bodily autonomy. If a man can force a woman to birth a child against her will, women are reduced to slaves.
Republicans are determined to not only prevent women from making choices on when and whether to have children, but they also refuse to provide those women with the means to raise those children when they arrive. You can't have it both ways.
"But your example isn't very likely," you say. How is that relevant? Even now, 32,000 pregnancies a year occur from rape. That's 32,000 women who would be forced to birth a child against their will, possibly more if these laws get passed, because at the same time as they are anti-woman, they are also pro-rapist. Just because that is a small percentage of the overall population does not make their pain any less real. We've passed laws for a much smaller percentage of the population in the past.
The pledge of allegiance says, "liberty and justice for all." It doesn't say, "for all except women," or "for all except the poor." The fact that there are cases where an abortion is the best choice means that we can't make blanket laws that cover this issue. It must be a choice, left up to the individuals involved, because there is no way that the law can allow for all of the contingencies that might arise.
When it gets right down to it, why do we even have laws about abortion and birth control at all? The only people who should be involved in these decisions are the woman, her family, and her doctor(s). The government does not have any right to regulate what happens in any woman's uterus.
To be anti-choice is to be a misogynist. It says that you know better than a mere woman what she should do with her own body. It says that you desire the ability to make her choices for her, and that you do not believe that she is capable of making a wise decision simply because she is a woman. How any thinking woman can fall in line with that is completely beyond me.
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