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Shocker: Sam Brownback supports forced pregnancy for rape and incest survivors

Jill

From an anti-choice site:

Sam Brownback, the Kansas senator, is widely considered by many in the pro-life community to be one of the strongest pro-life candidates seeking the Republican nomination for president. He proved his pro-life bona fides again over the weekend when he said he opposed abortion in cases of rape or incest.

Brownback’s comments came during the National Catholic Men’s Conference.

An appropriate venue if ever there was one.

He said that encouraging a woman who has been a victim of sexual abuse to have an abortion doesn’t address the problems she faces as a result of the rape and does nothing to prosecute the rapist.

“Rape is terrible. Rape is awful. Is it made any better by killing an innocent child? Does it solve the problem for the woman that’s been raped?” Brownback said, according to an AP report.

Well, if the woman has a problem with being impregnated by her rapist, then yeah, it kind of does solve that problem.

No one argues that abortion will solve all the emotional and physical problems that come with rape and incest. But legal abortion does give pregnant women the right to exercise control over their own bodies — something that is taken away from women and girls who survive sexual assault. Abortion is not the choice that every rape or incest survivor makes, but forcing a woman who has already had her sexual agency stripped from her to give birth against her will seems particularly cruel — just as it would be horribly cruel to force her to undergo an abortion against her will after having her body sexually violated.*

At least Brownback is consistent in his forced-birth views, though. Rape and incest exceptions sound nice and they’re certainly better than nothing (they’re also a good bridge from full illegal abortion into limited legality), but they essentially turn pregnancy into a punishment for women who chose to have sex — if you were forced to have sex then you can have access to this medical procedure, but if you had any sexual agency then you need to be punished for your slutitude.

At least Sam thinks that all women should be punished for their slutitude, agency or not. Score one for consistency.

*To be clear: I think it’s horribly cruel to force any woman to have an abortion or to continue a pregnancy against her will.

22 thoughts on Shocker: Sam Brownback supports forced pregnancy for rape and incest survivors

  1. forcing a woman who has already had her sexual agency stripped from her to give birth against her will seems particularly cruel

    Rape is about the rapist controlling the victim’s body for the rapist’s own ends.

    Anti-choice laws are about society controlling the pregnant woman’s body for its own ends.

    For society to deny a woman control over her own body after a rapist has just robber her of that control is not just cruel, it’s akin to raping her again.

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  3. Yeah, it’s awful, but it makes sense. It’s the only logically coherent position if you really believe that life begins at conception and that all abortion is the murder of an innocent. People who would ban abortion except for rape or incest are just trying to hedge.

    Of course, that doesn’t make him not an ass. Just a consistent ass.

  4. Jill,

    The first time I read that quote, I could do little more than sputter with outrage. It literally left me speachless.

    Thank you so much for articulating the rebuttal so beautifully.

    Edie

  5. Sorry. I don’t buy Brownback’s argument that this is all about the sanctity of life. Forced-pregnancy rape fantasies are a disturbingly rich genre in pornography and, one suspects, a very popular one among those who applaud him.

    figleaf

  6. In many ways, people who believe in rape and incest exceptions to anti-choice laws creep me out more than people who believe in flat out abortion bans. Like Jill, I do think that forcing a woman who has been raped to carry a pregnancy as a result is absolutely sickening– but I really don’t think that a rape and incest exception would really enable most women who’ve been raped to obtain an abortion. The burden of “proof” would be no doubt placed on the woman, and this would result in so many women being accused of lying in order to obtain an abortion… it would be horrible. At least people who support an outright ban simply believe that an embryo or fetus deserves the human right to life– many people just naively do not see this as conflicting with a woman’s bodily integrity, claiming that it is possible for a woman and a fetus to have “equal” rights, in the same way that a woman and a five year old child both have rights. People who support rape and incest bans, however, do not think that fetuses have equal rights to women (after all, no one would execute a five year old because his father was a rapist), but they STILL think women should be forced to carry– and the only explanation for that, is that they think that unintended pregnancy is a just punishment. This is, of course, not only demeaning to the woman (as indeed, any forced pregnancy is demeaning), but demeaning to any potential child, who would be brought into the world simply for the sake of punishment.

  7. “Rape is terrible. Rape is awful. Is it made any better by killing an innocent child?

    I hear this argument a lot and I wonder, do they honestly believe that the only reason a woman who is pregnant as a result of rape would want to have an abortion is in an attempt to make herself feel better by lashing out vindictively at an ‘innocent child’? Not because continuing that pregnancy would be understandably unbearable for her?

  8. After reading the rest of that article, those quotes make the *most* sense of any of them. “All these people are out there who don’t even know me, but are standing in judgment of my life, so quick to dismiss it just because of how I was conceived [described in the article as a brutal rape at knifepoint by a serial rapist]”?!? I cannot even articulate how little sense this makes to me, and how much this person seems to me to be missing the point. Abdabdubthhhp…*sputters*

  9. Oh, I suddenly realise my above comment might be unclear: it’s not Brownback who said that, but someone else quoted in the same article.

  10. It is all very well to talk about the terrifying choice victims of rape and incest are left with (or denied) when they learn they are pregnant. However, from a very pragmatic view . . . what happens afterwards? Certainly, (as the article references) when the woman gives birth, she can choose to give the child up for adoption. But what about during pregnancy?

    If Brownbeck gets his way, women will be forced to carry the child. Who will care for the mother during this time? What about psychological stress she is experiencing, and possible harm she would do to herself? At the very least, who will pay her bills when she goes on maternity leave? Once again, the woman is forced to pay – in so many ways – for being a victim.

    So many nightmare scenarios running through my mind . . .

  11. Beppie,

    I was thinking that myself. Sexual assualt is one of the most underreported crimes, and I can just see in the cases of these “exemptions” that a woman will have to produce a police report before gettng an abortion.

    These people are just sick. I really like the quote from the guy who was born from a rape. Of course now he wouldn’t have wanted to be aborted, but at the time it happened, I doubt he could have cared less.

  12. I see this a lot, and not just about rape victims: “abortion
    on demand doesn’t make kittens crap rainbows, so we should ban it.” How do people not see this for the non sequitur it is?

  13. Certainly, (as the article references) when the woman gives birth, she can choose to give the child up for adoption. – Ariel

    This “solution” of course assumes not only an availability of adoptive mothers but also a system that can handle it. My fiancee recently adopted a baby — and there were snafus galore in what should have been a relatively straightforward adoption. So imagine if the system were even more bogged down … anyway, how many anti-choicers are adoptive parents?

  14. I really like the quote from the guy who was born from a rape. Of course now he wouldn’t have wanted to be aborted, but at the time it happened, I doubt he could have cared less. – Aeryl

    I like how she assumes she would have been aborted, if abortion were an option for her biological mother. What does it say about her self-esteem that she leaps to this assumption? And what would it be like as a kid to learn “oh, I would have aborted you if I could have”?

    Just because something is legal doesn’t make it mandatory. Only in totalitarian dictatorships and the lab in which I work 😉 is “that which is not forbidden is mandatory” a fundamental principle.

    My maternal grandparents were very active in Planned Parenthood. It just so happens all three of their kids were the result of unplanned pregnancies (whilst they were active in the movement). Does that make them hypocrits? Maybe a little … but the point is that just ’cause abortion is legal doesn’t mean all people pregnant by rape would abort — even people who are militantly pro-choice might, um, choose not to abort!

    OTOH, Kennedey’s reasoning in that recent SCOTUS ruling, opens the door up for the opposite, nu? Supposing it’s bad for the mental health of women to carry fetuses conceived by rape to term — could the same SCOTUS which allowed an abortion procedure ban based on what it might due to the mental health of those poor wimins uphold a mandatory abortion requirement based on mental health concerns? Some say abortion is always immoral? Well, some of us say it’s immoral not to have an abortion under certain circumstances — would these anti-choicers be happy if a Jewish President pushed through a bill mandating abortions when the life of the mother-to-be was in danger?

    Do these anti-choicers really think things through? And what does it say that the woman quoted just assumes she would have been aborted?

  15. To be perfectly consistent, anti-choicers would not only have to advocate forced birth for pregnancy resulting from rape, but prosecution of women who have abortions as “murderers.”

    I’m not sure about Brownback, but most people on his side won’t take that position because they know the majority would utterly reject it. I’m sure they see this as pragmatism rather than what it really is: intellectual and moral incoherence.

  16. Brownback is a Christian Fundamentalist, crazy, dangerous man. He’s Rick Santorum on speed. The fact that he has a platform to speak as a supposed “presidential candidate” is sickening to me, no matter how long his shots of winning are. No one should be giving him a national stage . . . and that includes voting him into the Senate in the first place.

  17. I don’t really get the whole “My mother could have had an abortion and then I wouldn’t be here!” thing. It seems to really get a lot of people worked up, and I guess it must have something to do with the idea that they were meant to live here on Earth now, and that interfering with that is murder. But why would abortion be any worse than abstinence, then?

  18. I would die for my mother’s freedom and liberty, her life. If I’m not willing to consider that sacrifice, then I have no business demanding it of her for my sake.

    The disgusting sense of personal entitlement these anti-choicers have is appalling. One would think instead of hubris and invoking special privilege, they would have gained a sense of gratitude and humility in the face of the sacrifices their mothers made to afford them their existence. Their retort instead is to demean all women and demand they be relegated to a lower social status, to insult their own mothers in the process and to demand the blood and flesh of their wives, daughters, and sisters with so much snark and condescension as to elevate the conceptus of a rapist beyond that of the women whose bodies, lives, and liberties have been attacked.

    These jokers can’t even fathom forgoing their own existence before they were aware of it, much less credibly claim to be willing to sacrifice their life for the person who gave it to them, much less anyone else. And we’re to believe they are great warriors, these trembling, scared, pearl-clutching cowards? No wonder they can’t lead a nation or determine the best course of action to preserve our lives and liberties; they don’t even know what the concepts are that they purport to defend. These are moral failures, and they wear them with pride and arrogance rather than shame. And like-minded cowards would vote for them. Appalling.

  19. it really is: intellectual and moral incoherence.

    Very true. Now, if it’s them boys who get knocked up, I’m pretty sure moral standards would be more, shall we say, forgiving.

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