The rape and incest exception – how it reveals the true nature of “pro-life”

This is the core of the issue, this is what is the motivation that drives many who call themselves pro-life, but are really just anti-choice, or anti-abortion. People, women in particular, should not have sex, unless it is purely for reproduction. We see this type of idea all around us, whether it’s someone who believes that every woman who uses contraception is a whore, or whether it is a rape apologist who believes that the clothes we wear or who we’ve had consensual sex with changes the fact that we were raped, and that our rape is somehow “illegitimate.”

Being pro-life, or as I prefer to call it, anti-choice, has nothing to do with “saving babies,” but everything to do with controlling women and making sure that they stay sexually pure. According to the religious right, by being sexually pure women ensure that they are good and moral people, women are the so called “gate keepers” of sexuality purity. This idea has manifested itself in many different, and harmful ways in today’s society.

Women are being shamed and blamed for being raped, and being told that if they simply dressed “less like a whore” or didn’t drink and go out at night, that they wouldn’t be raped. And please, don’t delude yourself into thinking that this type of rhetoric is only happening in the United States, it is happening here in Canada as well. In February 2011 a Toronto police officer made a suggestion that if women stopped dressing like sluts they could avoid sexual assault. The comment sparked outrage and lead to “SlutWalks” across the country, as well as the world. But these types of comments aren’t just coming from men, Krista Ford, the niece of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford tweeted a few weeks ago,    “Stay alert, walk tall, carry mace, take self-defence classes & don’t dress like a whore.”

The only thing worse than a misogynistic man who hates women? A woman who hates her own gender. Lawmakers in the United States have recently tried to re-define rape as “forcible rape”, basically meaning that if a woman has been drinking, been previously sexually active, or has been dressing in a manner that is considered “asking for it”, her sexual assault or rape is somehow now illegitimate.

In 2008, Tennessee Democratic Senator Doug Henry stated: “Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste women, against her will, by some party not her spouse.”

Jessica Valenti states in her book, The Purity Myth, that the notions of sexual purity affect the way violence against women is perceived and even prosecuted. Women who have had sex in the past cannot be raped, as they have already given up their virginity, the “damage” has already been done. Valenti lists numerous cases of women who, according to judges, weren’t raped, and their assailants went free. One that particularly upset me was a case in Philadelphia, where a judge ruled that a sex worker who had been raped by multiple men at gunpoint wasn’t actually raped, she was just robbed. The victim, who worked for an escort service and found her clients via Craigslist, agreed to a set amount of money for certain sexual acts. However, he lured her into an abandoned building and then pulled a gun, more men began to show up, and rape her. The fifth man however helped her get dressed and leave because he saw that she was crying. Judge Teresa Carr Deni insisted that what happened to this woman wasn’t rape, it was “theft of services.”

I thought rape was a terrible trauma. A case like this minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped. Apparently a sex worker doesn’t qualify as one of these victims.

But lets get back to the shame around abortion. We’ve all heard them, the shaming insults that anti-choicer’s hurl at women, “Keep your legs closed! Whore! Slut!”

All these insults are aimed at shaming women who dare participate in consensual sex for pleasure, not for reproduction. God forbid a woman actually enjoy sex, without the prospects of having a child in the near future.

We’ve all heard the claim that women will regret their abortions later in life, you know, when they smarten up and realize that they have killed a baby. How about the response that is given when many anti-choicers are asked about what type of punishment should be given to a woman who obtains an illegal abortion, should abortion ever become illegal: “We should pray for the woman, she didn’t know what she was doing. Its the doctor that should be put in jail, he knew better.”

That’s right ladies and gents, us poor womenfolk aren’t smart enough to know what exactly is growing inside our uterus. This is of course why there are state-mandated ultrasounds (some of which take the form of a vaginal probe) for all women who wish to access abortion. Doctors are not only required to force a woman to have an ultrasound, but are also forced to describe in detail the current stage of the fetus, you know, in case there is a chance that this type of emotional manipulation might change a woman’s mind.

As stated in the beginning, the rape and incest exception that many anti-choicers hold is only to punish women, because we shouldn’t be having sex or deciding what we believe is right for our lives, without the guidance of the state.

Jaden Fitzherbert is an anti-choice activist in NB.