Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Kathleen Parker: If Alabama is trying to become the worst state for women, its strategy is strong
In Alabama, where a new law denies abortion to women even in cases of incest or rape, a rapist may still pursue custody rights of a child conceived during his assault.
I’ll give you a moment to digest that sentence. It gets worse.
In a recent case, a young woman in Alabama sought help when she said her step-uncle, who raped her when she was 15, was being released from prison after a drug conviction and wanted to share custody with the child who resulted from the alleged rape. Theoretically, he could even gain full custody. [..]
In fairness to the unborn, as well as to those strictly opposed to abortion, a child conceived through rape is surely innocent and deserves the same protections as one conceived in holy matrimony. I get that. But rape and incest have long been accepted as extraordinary circumstances under which abortion could largely be tolerated. What kind of people would effectively force a 15-year-old rape victim to have a child by her step-uncle and then face the prospect of shared custody with him?
It isn’t a stretch to say that, with its new draconian abortion law and its failure to block parenting rights to rapists, Alabama essentially has installed a medieval system in which women are treated as chattel, notwithstanding the duly elected Gov. Kay Ivey (R), who signed the bill. Though public stonings haven’t (yet) been suggested for disobedient women, we may not be as far removed from such practices as we might pretend to be.
Mary Ziegler: The End of the Rape and Incest Exception
Republicans are abandoning language that has long been standard in abortion bans. Why?
All of a sudden, abortion opponents have abandoned rape and incest exceptions to abortion bans.
Louisiana became the latest state to do so last month, following Ohio, Mississippi and, most notoriously, Alabama. That same month, younger abortion foes in groups like Students for Life of America fired off a letter asking the Republican Party to stop supporting exceptions that before this year had long been standard components of anti-abortion legislation.
Why the sudden shift on rape and incest, and what does it mean? Fights about rape and incest exceptions expose deeply different ideas about the guilt and trustworthiness of women — and about how much popular opinion should dictate abortion politics. [..]
Part of the answer seems to be generational. With a conservative majority now in place on the Supreme Court, some younger abortion foes seem willing to buck the Republican Party’s orthodoxy on issues from climate change to immigration — so why not abortion too?