Now what if a married woman with children is raped and becomes pregnant as a result? How many men are going to want to support the child of their wife’s rapist? How could you possibly as parents explain the adoption of a brother or sister? Abortion can be done quietly and discretely without dragging the whole family through the crime. What happens when rapist daddy wants visitation rights? Will she be ‘charged’ with parental alienation if she refuses or the child has learned of how she/he came to be?
What about a young teen pregnant from a date rape? A incest victim? There goes their right to privacy. Who is going to cover the cost of these children’s births and healthcare and and and……..
The following is an excerpt from a very well written article from a resident of North Dakota.
Certainly IUDs, which prevent implantation rather than fertilization, would be illegal, as would some birth control pills. And given the lack of trust in the professional ethics of board-certified physicians evidenced in the original version of the bill, we can bet there will be legislation down the road to absolutely ensure that a terminated ectopic pregnancy – or a spontaneous abortion or a miscarriage – wasn’t a plain old abortion in disguise. (Doctors can be so tricky.)
In fact, the people of North Dakota have no real idea what the legislation might mean for our people and our state, other than we can be pretty sure it will take millions of taxpayer dollars to defend the bill. And there are obvious things that would be illegal: stem cell research; termination of the pregnancy of a 14-year-old victim of incest; termination of the pregnancy of a 19-year-old college student given Rohypnol and gang-raped.
What we don’t know is what it will mean for the medical community and women with problem pregnancies or fertility problems. For instance, what will happen in iffy situations, such as when physicians know that pregnancy will seriously exacerbate diabetes or kidney disease in a woman but won’t necessarily kill her? How can they give the advice they think is most ethical if they expect to be hauled into court to defend it?
On a related note, I’ve been doing some work lately on the most common causes of maternal mortality (i.e. hemorrhaging) and discovered that maternal mortality from all causes is underreported in North America and Europe, up to 33% underreported, that is.
I wonder why that would be…
That’s a pretty significant percentage! Is this tied to the increase in c-sections or apart even from that?
It seems to be a question of classification, and is related to cerebrovascular events (strokes) and pulmonary embolism that occur and which can be directly attributed to being pregnant but which aren’t classified as maternal mortality (or at least weren’t when the Canadian study was done, for the years between 1988 and 2000). I don’t think it has anything to do with C-sections.
Of course, maternal mortality is nowhere near what it used to be, but it’s nevertheless underreported.