Conservatives Don't Just Want Us to Die
Conservatives want women to suffer for seeking out abortions and failing to bear "their" children. And liberals told feminists not to worry our pretty little heads about it.
They told us not to worry. They told us that it would never come to this. They told us that Roe would never be overturned and that, even if it was, women would not be left to die and suffer—and that everyone, regardless of ideology, would admit of exceptions for rape and incest.
By “they” I mean liberals. By “us” I mean feminists. We have been explaining the urgency of this situation for years. But instead of listening to those who would know, we were patted on the shoulder and treated like little ladies having hysterics about the impending abortion bans in many states throughout the country.
And now, this. A raped ten year-old girl was unable to get abortion care in her home state of Ohio and had to cross state lines, to Indiana, in order to terminate the pregnancy. A National Right to Life official, one Jim Bopp, an Indiana lawyer, believes that she should have borne the fetus regardless of her age and the circumstances of the pregnancy. “We don’t think we should devalue the life of the baby because of the sins of the father,” he opined to Politico recently.
The father turned out to be a 27 year-old man now charged with rape in Ohio. Until this emerged, many conservatives did not believe that a ten year-old girl had been raped. Now that it’s clear that it indeed happened, many seem to care little regardless.
“Unless her life was at [sic] danger, there is no exception for rape,” Bopp said in connection with this case. He has worked to draft legislation that would make abortion illegal under any circumstances in Indiana, except to save the life of the person forced to bear the fetus to term. If he and his ilk had their way, she “would have had the baby, and as [with] 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,” Bopp told Politico.
What monstrous reason could that be? And what benefit—or, rather, whose? Cui bono?
What’s more, this is not a woman, it’s a girl. She’s ten. Her hips and pelvis and reproductive system are not yet near maturity. At least as importantly, she is a child and should be allowed to remain so. I think of myself at ten—obsessed with ponies and kangaroos, enjoying sleepovers with best friends, basking on the beach with my family—and feel like weeping.
What would be the point though, when so few people listen? And many others hear such pleas with relish and derision.
Meanwhile Indiana’s proposed ban—which the state legislature is expected to vote on later this month—still doesn’t go far enough, by the lights of some conservatives. Idaho Republicans met at the state party’s convention on Saturday, and voted (by a nearly four-to-one margin) against extending abortion care to pregnant people even whose lives are in danger. They added, for good measure, that a child’s gender assignment at birth is fixed and immutable from thereon after—or an “essential characteristic of identity and purpose,” as they put it. “We strongly oppose any person, entity, or policy that attempts to confuse minors regarding their biological gender,” they added. Once again, we see anti-abortion zealotry and anti-trans bigotry proceeding in lockstep. This is the ugly logic of misogyny, together with white supremacist hetero-patriarchy: enforce gender and pregnancy, and make women and girls breed on behalf of the white cis men who need us to bear “their” children, thereby guaranteeing the future of the white race.
The Republican Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, is similarly suing the government for instructing doctors not to let us die, via the federal guidance stating that patients have the right to receive abortions as emergency medical treatment even if this contravenes state laws. And we have seen many medical practitioners around the country forced into an impossible position, having to wait until a patient with an ectopic pregnancy—which is never viable, and invariably needs medical treatment in the form of an abortion—causes a rupture and goes septic before this intervention is permissible.
But this is what they want: for women to suffer. The cruelty is the point, or at least part of it, to borrow a line from Adam Serwer. Conservatives want a stock of white babies, to be sure. But we are also seen as deviant, in need of correction, and not just as brood mares.
I am reminded of the conservative columnist Kevin Williamson, a writer for The National Review (and, briefly, The Atlantic), who confessed to having a “soft spot” for hanging when it comes to women who seek abortions. As he put it on his podcast in 2018:
I would totally go with treating [abortion] like any other crime up to and including hanging—which kind of, as I said, I’m kind of squishy about capital punishment in general, but I’ve got a soft spot for hanging as a form of capital punishment. I tend to think that things like lethal injection are a little too antiseptic.
To which the blogger Charles Johnson responded, unnerved, on Twitter: “You don’t just want these women to die, you want them to suffer.”
Feminists have long told liberals in no uncertain terms that this is the future conservatives in this country have been after. I was struck during a zoom call on Friday with the luminaries Kimberlé Crenshaw, Catharine MacKinnon, and Loretta Ross—who I’m honored to be joining for a panel tomorrow, along with Rafia Zakaria—just how unsurprised we all were. Just how weary we were to be rehearsing our arguments that this day was coming after its arrival.
For conservatives’ aim is not just to control women’s bodies, but to punish us for desertion of the home, hearth, and domestic sphere they see as our natural, rightful place and our moral obligation to inhabit uncomplainingly. Feminists have not been heeded, and we continue to be ignored. These are the consequences. They are dire, sometimes fatal.
Really powerful. I like the way you point to the distinction between liberals and feminists. I'm always so pissed at how feminist issues tend to drop off the agenda of most politicians.
Indeed, more things to hate. But these people aren’t conservatives. They’re right wing radicals.