The Daily Item
February 11, 2024
By Lynn Palermo
It’s been a year and a half since the Supreme Court used its power, for the first time ever, to eliminate a constitutional right: The right to access reproductive medical care, when needed, and without governmental interference. For 50 years, women had the hard-fought constitutional right to abortion, at least on paper (in reality, many didn’t because state and federal legislatures had been whittling away at it for years). But then the Supreme Court said, you know what? That was a judicial error! You never should have had that right in the first place. Now we have to fight again, 50 times — separately in every state.
Since that decision, we have been forced to expand our understanding of legislative cruelty. We have watched state governments pass laws in what seemed to be a contest of who can clamp down hardest and shove women into the tightest corner. We’ve witnessed their meanness of spirit, their disdain for women, their chest-beating moral righteousness. We’ve watched the fury of these small-minded, largely male legislatures when women have found ways around the inhumane controls being imposed. In response, they have added more laws criminalizing people who try to get care in other states, people who help them get there, and doctors who tell women where they might go for help when they themselves are powerless to give it. It is a vast, horrifying downward spiral by every ethical and humanitarian measure. We watched the Ohio courts refuse a 10-year-old rape victim access to an abortion. When serious adults drove her to Indiana, where she could still receive care, the Indiana AG threatened the Indiana doctor who treated her. This was a 10-year-old girl who had been impregnated by an adult man who raped her. A 10-year-old girl’s body is not equipped for any of that, nor is her mind. Nine months of pregnancy and childbirth pose a serious danger to her. Who could possibly think it is right to force a fifth-grader to endure nine months of pregnancy with all the risks to life and health, followed by labor and childbirth? Then, they face the choice of raising an infant or giving it up for adoption. Effectively, these legislators were heaping a lifetime of suffering on a child whose only mistake was being raped. Such thinking demonstrates an irresponsible, even criminal, abandonment of all rational faculties. Some might claim that this case was just an exception sensationalized in the media for its sympathy value. But recently, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study estimating that since the Dobbs decision 18 months ago, some 64,000 women in the 14 states where abortion has been banned have become pregnant through rape by a man.
Let’s just pause for a moment to take in that number: 64,000 women raped with no recourse.
Now, put yourself in their shoes: A man raped you. In addition to dealing with that violent offense, you are pregnant. Your government says you have to carry it to term and give birth. Then what? If you decide to keep the baby (giving it up is also a wrenching, life-long decision), does the rapist-father have rights to the child? Could he sue you for visitation, even custody? Would you have to have regular contact with the man who raped you until your child reaches legal adulthood? Maybe the rapist-father has responsibilities toward your child. Does he have to pay child support? Who makes sure that happens?
The U.S. Census Bureau shows that only about 28% of custodial parents receive financial support from non-custodial parents. Only two-thirds of that 28% receive payment regularly. What if you press charges of rape and he is convicted? In Pennsylvania, the incarcerated can request downward modifications to child support agreements. Makes sense: Who can pay bills while incarcerated? But it also means that if you seek justice for the rape, it could cost you the child support.
This is the agony that legislatures are inflicting on their people, and with sickening eagerness. Yet, every time it’s put to a vote, they lose big. Because clearly, this is not about life. It’s about control, and people know it. We must not let it happen in Pennsylvania. We must restore this right nationwide.
Lynn Palermo, a Lewisburg resident and translator, is retired from the faculty at Susquehanna University. She is a member of The Daily Item’s community advisory board.