ddrueding
Fixture
Nice piece. The most interesting comment in the thread:
Mourdock was explaining why he was against an exception for rape in abortion laws. So perhaps this is the right place to point out that if abortion is made illegal, there will never be a real exception for rape.
If a woman is raped and wants to have an abortion, what will be the process for declaring this exception? There won’t be time for a criminal trial, so is her word good enough? Or her and a doctor? Her and a judge? Does she have to name her rapist? Is that news made public? Can he sue her for libel thereafter? For defamation? Can the state later decide she was lying and imprison her?
Who will have access to the legal advice necessary to get through this thicket? Poor women? Women who’ve just been through the worst experience of their lives? How will it work for women with a criminal record? What about women with a prior perjury conviction?
And who will be thinking their way through these gnarly questions? The Mississippi State Legislature. The good men of the Kansas State Legislature. The folks who have at every turn tried to make it impossible to have any access to abortion, even now when it is legal.
There will never be a workable exception for rape. (Well, maybe in New York, if you’re wealthy.) Once abortion is legal, the only right to choose is the right of the rapist to choose the mother of his child.