Pro-Lifers Aren't Even Trying to Make Abortion Restrictions Sound Nice Anymore

The era of warm and fuzzy-sounding abortion laws, though, may be behind us. The success they saw in 2011, and 2012—another unprecedented year for abortion restrictions—have galvanized pro-lifers to undo a set of rights that they had previously left well enough alone: exceptions for victims of rape and incest. A new report out from the National Women’s Law Center found that a staggering number of new curtailments on abortion rights don’t make exceptions when a woman has become pregnant by rape. Out of all 273 abortion limitations proposed at the state level from January to June, nearly nine in ten, or 235 of them, made no such exception. Of the 25 relevant bills introduced to Congress, 18 of them had no exception.

[…]
It’s a gambit that has instantly made abortion laws like waiting periods and laws compelling physicians to give women information on child support feel extra pernicious. To wit, the title of the NWLC’s report is “Shut that whole thing down,” words that were snatched from Akin’s infamous claim that rape victims don’t need abortion services. Many of the new or proposed restrictions that the report highlights may already sound familiar because of the heinous statements that lawmakers made in defending them. See Rep. Trent Franks justifying a U.S. House bill to ban all abortions, without exception, 20 weeks after fertilization: “The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.” Or Barbara Listing, the president of Right to Life Michigan, explaining why insurance coverage for abortion should cost extra even in cases of rape: “It’s simply, like, nobody plans to have an accident in a car accident, nobody plans to have their homes flooded. You have to buy extra insurance for those.”

[…]
“I think they are emboldened,” Sharon Levin, the director of federal reproductive health policy for NWLC and a co-author of the report, said of pro-life advocates. Since Republicans like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock doomed their Senate bids in 2012 by making stunning statements about rape, she said, “There have been a lot of cries for Republicans, from Republicans, to stop talking about rape—but not to step back from what they are doing.”