As the ewes of the "party of Lincoln" are led to ideological slaughter imagining a shirtless Paul Ryan, we are reminded of him dumping his one true love, Ayn Rand, into the dustbin of denunciation on the back row of his bookshelf. All is fair in love and politics. "Who better to rain misery upon the heads of millions of Americans ? He’s Scrooge disguised as a Pickwick, an ideologue disguised as a wonk" (Dowd 2012).
To describe R-money's stance on abortion at "personhood", you'd have as much luck nailing him down on what his position is as you would trying to catch one of Ryan's catfish with greased gloves. But Ryan's positions are more rock solid and definitive, that is until his next handlers' briefing. (Maddow 2012)
Ryan has supported the Federal versions of the Mississippi "personhood" bill, the Virginian "Ultrasound" bill, and combines into his own HR 212 "Sanctity of Human Life Act" which:
"(B) the life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent, irrespective of sex, health, function or disability, defect, stage of biological development, or condition of dependency, at which time every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood; and
(2) the Congress affirms that the Congress, each State, the District of Columbia, and all United States territories have the authority to protect the lives of all human beings residing in its respective jurisdictions" (Drum 2012).
Therefore if human life begins at fertilization, it follows that abortion would be illegal even in cases of rape and incest, in cases concerning the life of the mother, and note that this also leads to legally defining in-vitro fertilization (IVF) as an illegal act in and of itself as well. IVF is used for tens of thousands of couples suffering from infertility problems, including Romney's own children which has produced him grandchildren, but also costs tens of thousands of dollars because it's not usually covered by health insurance. But there are administration efforts underway already crafting an Essential Health Benefits Plan, and a report that IVF may be included as an essential benefit (Mencimer 2012). Ironic, eh ?
One interesting aspect of this Personhood approach will be how the proponents attempt to differ between induced abortions and spontaneous abortions. To clarify, a spontaneous abortion is when expectant mothers experience what is known as a miscarriage or other involuntary pregnancy termination resulting in death of the fetus.
ReplyDeleteThis occurs at a rate of between 900,000 and 1,000,000 times a year in the United States, according to the March of Dimes.
After all, once the State accepts responsibility to protect every fertilized egg, something will have to be done to prevent miscarriages. Every human being means every fertilized egg. Probably the most effective way to do this would be involuntary hospital confinement of every woman after unprotected sex until a determination has been made whether an egg was fertilized. Once we are certain a potential mother is not pregnant, she could be allowed to go home. Those women with a fertilized egg, of course, would remain in protective custody under medical scrutiny until the newborn baby is delivered. Women who evade these procedures and have a miscarriage would have to be prosecuted for homicide.
Alternatively, the State might choose to permit women to continue as they do now, walking around with a person at risk in-utero. However, if a miscarriage occurs, an investigation would be necessary to determine the death was not the result of some negligence or malfeasance on the part of the mother. The aborted fetus would have to be examined, and pathologists would have to certify the spontaneous abortion could not have been prevented by appropriate behavior of the mother.
The median expected salary for a typical physician practicing pathology in the United States is $249,494. Assuming a pathologist could average an hour per determination, each pathologist would be able to do 8 determinations per day. So, a million determinations per year would require 125,000 Pathologist-days per year at a cost of about $86 million. In addition, assuming some determinations indicated fault on the part of the mother, the pathologist would be required to testify, and that would add to the cost. Naturally, the process would require additional police officers, prosecutors, judges, public defenders, prisons and staff, and so on. This could turn into a billion dollar industry.