Palin explains that she thinks women raped, even by their fathers, should be “encouraged” to bear the child.
Although Palin says she doesn’t want to send anyone to jail for having an abortion, the policies she advocates would do just that. She has already admitted that she wants justices and judges to be appointed on the litmus test of being against abortion. If Roe v.Wade is overturned,then likely each state will have its own abortion law, and certainly women would be going to jail in Alabama for violating that state’s prohibition of it.
The irrationality of the American religious right is demonstrated by their attempt, in Louisiana, to make rape a capital crime. So let me get this straight. Respect for “life” means a raped woman can’t have an abortion and must bear her attacker’s child for nine months of her life and then risk being responsible for it for a lifetime.
But the religious right wants to kill the child’s father (that is absolute respect for life?) and make sure that the child has no one who could be made to provide child support and ensure the child gets a proper education.
I wrote on a different occasion:
‘Anti-abortion activism is essentially patriarchal. It insists that the woman’s egg, once fertilized, is immediately a person and that the woman loses control over her body by virtue of being impregnated by her husband’s sperm. It is men who dictate to the woman that she must carry the fertilized egg to term, must be a mother once impregnated by a man. For extreme anti-abortionists, even a woman who has been raped or is in danger of losing her life if she tries to give birth must be forced to bear the child. A rapist can make a woman be a mother whether she likes it or not, because his maleness gives him prerogatives not withdrawn by his mere criminality.’