Go to Original
Coerced Abortion Bill Harms, Not Protects, Women
By Pamela Merritt
RH Reality Check
Monday 28 April 2008
Flowers are blooming, the temperature is rising and Missouri lawmakers are
trying to work another anti-choice bill through the legislature.
It must be spring!
The Missouri House has approved House Bill 1831, which "changes the laws
regarding the consent requirements for obtaining an abortion and creates the
crime of coercing an abortion." As a Missouri native my initial reaction
was to ask what this bill was in response to. I haven't noticed a flood of news
stories about coerced abortions here and pro-choice is the antithesis of coercion.
But, true to form, this bill is not in response to a rash of complaints by women
who have been coerced into an abortion. Rather, House Bill 1831 (Senate Bill
1058) is about devaluing the intelligence of women and questioning our ability
to make decisions about our medical care.
In the mythical Missouri represented in House Bill 1831, women are fragile
gullible creatures that need to be protected from manipulative forces that seek
for us to have an abortion we don't really want to have. Under the provisions
of the bill a man who asks his partner to have an abortion is guilty of coercion
even if his partner was not actually pregnant and never actually had an abortion.
A business would be guilty of coercion simply for threatening to reduce a pregnant
employees pay and/or cut that employee's benefits. Oh but wait, it gets better!
A business would also be guilty of coercion for threatening to terminate the
employment of a pregnant employee.
Under House Bill 1831 schools would risk prosecution for coercion simply by
threatening to revoke a pregnant woman's scholarship. Terminating a pregnancy
resulting from rape would be considered coercion and physicians would face a
felony charge for performing that abortion.
Pamela L. Sumners, Esq., Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, points
out that the House Bill 1831 recently approved by the Missouri House was much
better than what was originally proposed.
"Believe it or not, this bill is so much better than it was when first
it was introduced. It made leaving or even attempting to leave one's pregnant
wife because she did not want to have an abortion a crime, ditto with threatening
twice (but not just once!) to move out under these circums
Sumners added that NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, Planned Parenthood, and domestic
violence lobbyists worked very hard to strip the most constitutionally objectionable
provisions from the bill.
"I want everyone to know how hard we work to keep the most utterly egregious
provisions out of legislation. We still despise the glorious instrument you
see today, of course. We do not like the premise of creating a crime of 'coercing'
an abortion, although we at NARAL, like any other people of good taste and right
reason, abhor the notion of coercion. We simply think that battery, assault,
and stalking laws would adequately address any legally actionable "coercion"
in this context."
House Bill 1831 (Senate Bill 1058) remains horribly flawed. The bill imposes
personal investigative requirements on doctors requiring that they ascertain
whether a patient seeking abortion services has an athletic scholarship that
may be revoked or if she has been told her job will be negatively impacted if
she is pregnant. A physician who fails to meet these investigative requirements
will have committed a Class C felony.
What I find most alarming about House Bill 1831 is the creation of the crime
of coercion. I can not imagine how this law would be enforced or how the legal
system would determine that the law had been violated beyond a reasonable doubt.
Add in the potential of false accusations and this mess just gets messier.
The Missouri Senate will soon take their version, Senate Bill 1058, under consideration.
Given all that is wrong with this legislation, Missouri Senators should take
this opportunity to lead by example and put an end to this insulting and unconstitutional
nonsense.
-------
Jump to today's Truthout Issues:
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.
Print This Story
E-mail This Story