The general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee has said that a 10-year-old girl who was recently forced to travel across state lines to get an abortion after being raped should not have been able to do so. Under his “ideal” law, she would have had to carry the pregnancy to term.
Speaking to Politico, Indiana attorney Jim Bopp said that the anti-abortion legislation he’s crafted would only make an exception in cases where the pregnant person’s life is in danger. Of course, pregnancy is extremely likely to threaten the life of a 10-year-old so in what is probably the best-case scenario, all this “exception” would do is subject a child to months of trauma before finally allowing her the necessary medical care she otherwise could have gotten right away.
The mortality risk for a 10 or 11 year-old to carry a child to term is MASSIVE.
— joanna schroeder (@iproposethis) July 14, 2022
Globally, around 50% of pregnant girls who have to deliver die.
In the USA I'd expect that number to be lower – but probably not by much. I've been startled at how hard it is to find that data. https://t.co/5RVtr7Cv8G
Bopp told Politico that under his law, that Ohio 10-year-old “would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child.”
As a reminder, a 10-year-old child is not a “woman.”
Bopp and the NRLC are behind much of the anti-abortion legislation of recent decades. Groups like these craft the bills that then get introduced in various states, which is a big part of why so many states’ bills look so similar to each other, and it’s why Bopp is so dangerous—because he has actual power in state legislatures across the country. (We’ve talked about his model bill before, as it would ban websites like ours from writing anything that could be considered “aiding or abetting” an abortion.)
Incredibly, Bopp says that the extreme piece of legislation he’s crafted doesn’t actually go as far as he would like.
“Unless her life was at danger, there is no exception for rape,” Bopp told Politico. “The bill does propose exceptions for rape and incest, in my model, because that is a pro-life position, but it’s not our ideal position.” Looking at the model law, it doesn’t even really include those exceptions but acknowledges they might be required to pass in some states and offered potential language to use in those cases.
Bopp added: “We don’t think, as heartwrenching as those circumstances are, we don’t think we should devalue the life of the baby because of the sins of the father.” The fact that he left out one important person in that scenario is not exactly subtle, is it?
Bopp’s position is extreme, not because of what he believes but because he’s willing to say it. Most anti-abortion figures know how monstrous it sounds to say that a child who is the victim of rape should be forced to carry their pregnancy to term. Elsewhere today, anti-abortion officials were tripping over themselves to try to redefine what it even means to have an abortion, just to avoid saying that this young girl in the news had one, and that they condone it.
Watch @cateici lie and tell @RepSwalwell that the 10 y.o. rape victim who traveled to Indiana didn’t get an abortion. It wasn’t an abortion, she says. (It was.)
— ⚓️Imani Two-Kitchens Gandy⚓️ (@AngryBlackLady) July 14, 2022
They’re redefining what abortion because they know the law is ghoulish and forces children to have babies. Disgusting. pic.twitter.com/RdvXHowiHF
In case you don’t want to watch the nonsense, or you did watch the nonsense and it still doesn’t make sense (don’t worry, it’s not you), that’s the President and CEO of Americans United for Life, claiming that if a 10-year-old child is raped and becomes pregnant, the process she goes through to terminate the pregnancy is not actually an abortion. Why? Because it’s listed in the state law as an exception to the abortion ban. Which, by her unhinged logic, means it can’t actually be an abortion.
For the record, it is exactly an abortion. And like every other abortion, it is a necessary form of health care.
(image: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
