- FILED UNDER
- Rekha Basu
Even committed abortion foes have long acknowledged the need for exceptions for cases of rape, incest, saving a mother's life or ending a pregnancy when a seriously deformed fetus wasn't expected to survive. They understood the implicit cruelty of demanding a girl impregnated by her abusive father, or a woman who knew she would lose the child, carry that pregnancy to term.
But in this punishing new territory of moral absolutism, the old rules of compassion are out. Now, politicians want to let the "values voters" who elected them know they're sticking to the hard line rather than working through tough issues with independence, conscience and pragmatism. And if proving themselves means rewriting laws to hurt vulnerable people, let the chips fall where they may.
What the bill would do
Here is where they will fall in Iowa if a House Appropriations bill for human services, which has cleared one committee, becomes law. Low-income rape and incest victims who depend on state-paid health care would be forced to give birth to their abusers' children. The state would not pay the $1,592 average cost for an abortion.
Most people on public assistance can't readily cough up that much. So they'd give birth to children who would serve as lifelong connections to the attackers - and maybe not just through biology. What if a rapist, unconvicted, demanded an active role in the child's life? The possibilities are horrifying.
Federal law allows Medicaid to pay for abortions in cases of rape or incest, or when fetuses are so deformed, doctors don't expect them to survive outside the womb. The only state that withholds Medicaid funds for such abortions is South Dakota. But if this bill becomes law, Iowa's Medicaid program would only pay to save a woman's life.
Why bother? the cynic in me wonders. Why pretend concern for the poor woman's life after demonstrating total disregard for her autonomy? Besides, if life begins at conception, as House members are also intent on enshrining into law, don't mother and fetus have equal claims to it?
That this bill is ideologically driven rather than born of concern for taxpayers is clear from the fact that since 2005, no state or federal funds have been spent in Iowa to pay for abortions resulting from rape or incest.
A double standard
There is a fundamental and growing disconnect between the limits that conservative politicians seek to place on abortion rights and those they want to place on government. Every other conservative rallying cry these days is to limit government's role, whether in championing home schooling, calling to repeal a government health plan, or even defending junk food in the name of personal choice. From banks to the environment to gun control, government is portrayed as the enemy, and deregulation is the mantra. Yet the Iowa House of Representatives has no fewer than six bills to restrict abortion rights. In forcing women to bear their rapists' children, or give birth to babies who won't survive, the ideologues would have government reach deep into women's private lives. It would forbid them from making choices the U.S. Supreme Court has declared they must have.
This bill takes control away from victims again, and robs poor women of rights those with higher incomes have. It's wrong ethically, practically and every other way you look at it. It should go no farther.
